{"context": "<s> You are given a story, which can be either a novel or a movie script, and a question. Answer the question asconcisely as you can, using a single phrase if possible. Do not provide any explanation.\n\nStory: Transcribed from the 1915 Martin Secker edition by David Price, email\nccx074@pglaf.org\n\n                          [Picture: Book cover]\n\n\n\n\n\n                                   THE\n                                COXON FUND\n\n\n                              BY HENRY JAMES\n\n                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n                          LONDON: MARTIN SECKER\n                     NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n                    This edition first published 1915\n\n                       The text follows that of the\n                            Definitive Edition\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n\n\n\nI\n\n\n“THEY’VE got him for life!” I said to myself that evening on my way back\nto the station; but later on, alone in the compartment (from Wimbledon to\nWaterloo, before the glory of the District Railway) I amended this\ndeclaration in the light of the sense that my friends would probably\nafter all not enjoy a monopoly of Mr. Saltram.  I won’t pretend to have\ntaken his vast measure on that first occasion, but I think I had achieved\na glimpse of what the privilege of his acquaintance might mean for many\npersons in the way of charges accepted.  He had been a great experience,\nand it was this perhaps that had put me into the frame of foreseeing how\nwe should all, sooner or later, have the honour of dealing with him as a\nwhole.  Whatever impression I then received of the amount of this total,\nI had a full enough vision of the patience of the Mulvilles.  He was to\nstay all the winter: Adelaide dropped it in a tone that drew the sting\nfrom the inevitable emphasis.  These excellent people might indeed have\nbeen content to give the circle of hospitality a diameter of six months;\nbut if they didn’t say he was to stay all summer as well it was only\nbecause this was more than they ventured to hope.  I remember that at\ndinner that evening he wore slippers, new and predominantly purple, of\nsome queer carpet-stuff; but the Mulvilles were still in the stage of\nsupposing that he might be snatched from them by higher bidders.  At a\nlater time they grew, poor dears, to fear no snatching; but theirs was a\nfidelity which needed no help from competition to make them proud.\nWonderful indeed as, when all was said, you inevitably pronounced Frank\nSaltram, it was not to be overlooked that the Kent Mulvilles were in\ntheir way still more extraordinary: as striking an instance as could\neasily be encountered of the familiar truth that remarkable men find\nremarkable conveniences.\n\nThey had sent for me from Wimbledon to come out and dine, and there had\nbeen an implication in Adelaide’s note—judged by her notes alone she\nmight have been thought silly—that it was a case in which something\nmomentous was to be determined or done.  I had never known them not be in\na “state” about somebody, and I dare say I tried to be droll on this\npoint in accepting their invitation.  On finding myself in the presence\nof their latest discovery I had not at first felt irreverence droop—and,\nthank heaven, I have never been absolutely deprived of that alternative\nin Mr. Saltram’s company.  I saw, however—I hasten to declare it—that\ncompared to this specimen their other phoenixes had been birds of\ninconsiderable feather, and I afterwards took credit to myself for not\nhaving even in primal bewilderments made a mistake about the essence of\nthe man.  He had an incomparable gift; I never was blind to it—it dazzles\nme still.  It dazzles me perhaps even more in remembrance than in fact,\nfor I’m not unaware that for so rare a subject the imagination goes to\nsome expense, inserting a jewel here and there or giving a twist to a\nplume.  How the art of portraiture would rejoice in this figure if the\nart of portraiture had only the canvas!  Nature, in truth, had largely\nrounded it, and if memory, hovering about it, sometimes holds her breath,\nthis is because the voice that comes back was really golden.\n\nThough the great man was an inmate and didn’t dress, he kept dinner on\nthis occasion waiting, and the first words he uttered on coming into the\nroom were an elated announcement to Mulville that he had found out\nsomething.  Not catching the allusion and gaping doubtless a little at\nhis face, I privately asked Adelaide what he had found out.  I shall\nnever forget the look she gave me as she replied: “Everything!”  She\nreally believed it.  At that moment, at any rate, he had found out that\nthe mercy of the Mulvilles was infinite.  He had previously of course\ndiscovered, as I had myself for that matter, that their dinners were\nsoignés.  Let me not indeed, in saying this, neglect to declare that I\nshall falsify my counterfeit if I seem to hint that there was in his\nnature any ounce of calculation.  He took whatever came, but he never\nplotted for it, and no man who was so much of an absorbent can ever have\nbeen so little of a parasite.  He had a system of the universe, but he\nhad no system of sponging—that was quite hand-to-mouth.  He had fine\ngross easy senses, but it was not his good-natured appetite that wrought\nconfusion.  If he had loved us for our dinners we could have paid with\nour dinners, and it would have been a great economy of finer matter.  I\nmake free in these connexions with the plural possessive because if I was\nnever able to do what the Mulvilles did, and people with still bigger\nhouses and simpler charities, I met, first and last, every demand of\nreflexion, of emotion—particularly perhaps those of gratitude and of\nresentment.  No one, I think, paid the tribute of giving him up so often,\nand if it’s rendering honour to borrow wisdom I’ve a right to talk of my\nsacrifices.  He yielded lessons as the sea yields fish—I lived for a\nwhile on this diet.  Sometimes it almost appeared to me that his massive\nmonstrous failure—if failure after all it was—had been designed for my\nprivate recreation.  He fairly pampered my curiosity; but the history of\nthat experience would take me too far.  This is not the large canvas I\njust now spoke of, and I wouldn’t have approached him with my present\nhand had it been a question of all the features.  Frank Saltram’s\nfeatures, for artistic purposes, are verily the anecdotes that are to be\ngathered.  Their name is legion, and this is only one, of which the\ninterest is that it concerns even more closely several other persons.\nSuch episodes, as one looks back, are the little dramas that made up the\ninnumerable facets of the big drama—which is yet to be reported.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nIT is furthermore remarkable that though the two stories are distinct—my\nown, as it were, and this other—they equally began, in a manner, the\nfirst night of my acquaintance with Frank Saltram, the night I came back\nfrom Wimbledon so agitated with a new sense of life that, in London, for\nthe very thrill of it, I could only walk home.  Walking and swinging my\nstick, I overtook, at Buckingham Gate, George Gravener, and George\nGravener’s story may be said to have begun with my making him, as our\npaths lay together, come home with me for a talk.  I duly remember, let\nme parenthesise, that it was still more that of another person, and also\nthat several years were to elapse before it was to extend to a second\nchapter.  I had much to say to him, none the less, about my visit to the\nMulvilles, whom he more indifferently knew, and I was at any rate so\namusing that for long afterwards he never encountered me without asking\nfor news of the old man of the sea.  I hadn’t said Mr. Saltram was old,\nand it was to be seen that he was of an age to outweather George\nGravener.  I had at that time a lodging in Ebury Street, and Gravener was\nstaying at his brother’s empty house in Eaton Square.  At Cambridge, five\nyears before, even in our devastating set, his intellectual power had\nseemed to me almost awful.  Some one had once asked me privately, with\nblanched cheeks, what it was then that after all such a mind as that left\nstanding.  “It leaves itself!” I could recollect devoutly replying.  I\ncould smile at present for this remembrance, since before we got to Ebury\nStreet I was struck with the fact that, save in the sense of being well\nset up on his legs, George Gravener had actually ceased to tower.  The\nuniverse he laid low had somehow bloomed again—the usual eminences were\nvisible.  I wondered whether he had lost his humour, or only, dreadful\nthought, had never had any—not even when I had fancied him most\nAristophanesque.  What was the need of appealing to laughter, however, I\ncould enviously enquire, where you might appeal so confidently to\nmeasurement?  Mr. Saltram’s queer figure, his thick nose and hanging lip,\nwere fresh to me: in the light of my old friend’s fine cold symmetry they\npresented mere success in amusing as the refuge of conscious ugliness.\nAlready, at hungry twenty-six, Gravener looked as blank and parliamentary\nas if he were fifty and popular.  In my scrap of a residence—he had a\nworldling’s eye for its futile conveniences, but never a comrade’s joke—I\nsounded Frank Saltram in his ears; a circumstance I mention in order to\nnote that even then I was surprised at his impatience of my enlivenment.\nAs he had never before heard of the personage it took indeed the form of\nimpatience of the preposterous Mulvilles, his relation to whom, like\nmine, had had its origin in an early, a childish intimacy with the young\nAdelaide, the fruit of multiplied ties in the previous generation.  When\nshe married Kent Mulville, who was older than Gravener and I and much\nmore amiable, I gained a friend, but Gravener practically lost one.  We\nreacted in different ways from the form taken by what he called their\ndeplorable social action—the form (the term was also his) of nasty\nsecond-rate gush.  I may have held in my ‘for intérieur’ that the good\npeople at Wimbledon were beautiful fools, but when he sniffed at them I\ncouldn’t help taking the opposite line, for I already felt that even\nshould we happen to agree it would always be for reasons that differed.\nIt came home to me that he was admirably British as, without so much as a\nsociable sneer at my bookbinder, he turned away from the serried rows of\nmy little French library.\n\n“Of course I’ve never seen the fellow, but it’s clear enough he’s a\nhumbug.”\n\n“Clear ‘enough’ is just what it isn’t,” I replied; “if it only were!”\nThat ejaculation on my part must have been the beginning of what was to\nbe later a long ache for final frivolous rest.  Gravener was profound\nenough to remark after a moment that in the first place he couldn’t be\nanything but a Dissenter, and when I answered that the very note of his\nfascination was his extraordinary speculative breadth my friend retorted\nthat there was no cad like your cultivated cad, and that I might depend\nupon discovering—since I had had the levity not already to have\nenquired—that my shining light proceeded, a generation back, from a\nMethodist cheesemonger.  I confess I was struck with his insistence, and\nI said, after reflexion: “It may be—I admit it may be; but why on earth\nare you so sure?”—asking the question mainly to lay him the trap of\nsaying that it was because the poor man didn’t dress for dinner.  He took\nan instant to circumvent my trap and come blandly out the other side.\n\n“Because the Kent Mulvilles have invented him.  They’ve an infallible\nhand for frauds.  All their geese are swans.  They were born to be duped,\nthey like it, they cry for it, they don’t know anything from anything,\nand they disgust one—luckily perhaps!—with Christian charity.”  His\nvehemence was doubtless an accident, but it might have been a strange\nforeknowledge.  I forget what protest I dropped; it was at any rate\nsomething that led him to go on after a moment: “I only ask one\nthing—it’s perfectly simple.  Is a man, in a given case, a real\ngentleman?”\n\n“A real gentleman, my dear fellow—that’s so soon said!”\n\n“Not so soon when he isn’t!  If they’ve got hold of one this time he must\nbe a great rascal!”\n\n“I might feel injured,” I answered, “if I didn’t reflect that they don’t\nrave about me.”\n\n“Don’t be too sure!  I’ll grant that he’s a gentleman,” Gravener\npresently added, “if you’ll admit that he’s a scamp.”\n\n“I don’t know which to admire most, your logic or your benevolence.”\n\nMy friend coloured at this, but he didn’t change the subject.  “Where did\nthey pick him up?”\n\n“I think they were struck with something he had published.”\n\n“I can fancy the dreary thing!”\n\n“I believe they found out he had all sorts of worries and difficulties.”\n\n“That of course wasn’t to be endured, so they jumped at the privilege of\npaying his debts!”  I professed that I knew nothing about his debts, and\nI reminded my visitor that though the dear Mulvilles were angels they\nwere neither idiots nor millionaires.  What they mainly aimed at was\nreuniting Mr. Saltram to his wife.  “I was expecting to hear he has\nbasely abandoned her,” Gravener went on, at this, “and I’m too glad you\ndon’t disappoint me.”\n\nI tried to recall exactly what Mrs. Mulville had told me.  “He didn’t\nleave her—no.  It’s she who has left him.”\n\n“Left him to us?” Gravener asked.  “The monster—many thanks!  I decline\nto take him.”\n\n“You’ll hear more about him in spite of yourself.  I can’t, no, I really\ncan’t resist the impression that he’s a big man.”  I was already\nmastering—to my shame perhaps be it said—just the tone my old friend\nleast liked.\n\n“It’s doubtless only a trifle,” he returned, “but you haven’t happened to\nmention what his reputation’s to rest on.”\n\n“Why on what I began by boring you with—his extraordinary mind.”\n\n“As exhibited in his writings?”\n\n“Possibly in his writings, but certainly in his talk, which is far and\naway the richest I ever listened to.”\n\n“And what’s it all about?”\n\n“My dear fellow, don’t ask me!  About everything!” I pursued, reminding\nmyself of poor Adelaide.  “About his ideas of things,” I then more\ncharitably added.  “You must have heard him to know what I mean—it’s\nunlike anything that ever was heard.”  I coloured, I admit, I overcharged\na little, for such a picture was an anticipation of Saltram’s later\ndevelopment and still more of my fuller acquaintance with him.  However,\nI really expressed, a little lyrically perhaps, my actual imagination of\nhim when I proceeded to declare that, in a cloud of tradition, of legend,\nhe might very well go down to posterity as the greatest of all great\ntalkers.  Before we parted George Gravener had wondered why such a row\nshould be made about a chatterbox the more and why he should be pampered\nand pensioned.  The greater the wind-bag the greater the calamity.  Out\nof proportion to everything else on earth had come to be this wagging of\nthe tongue.  We were drenched with talk—our wretched age was dying of it.\nI differed from him here sincerely, only going so far as to concede, and\ngladly, that we were drenched with sound.  It was not however the mere\nspeakers who were killing us—it was the mere stammerers.  Fine talk was\nas rare as it was refreshing—the gift of the gods themselves, the one\nstarry spangle on the ragged cloak of humanity.  How many men were there\nwho rose to this privilege, of how many masters of conversation could he\nboast the acquaintance?  Dying of talk?—why we were dying of the lack of\nit!  Bad writing wasn’t talk, as many people seemed to think, and even\ngood wasn’t always to be compared to it.  From the best talk indeed the\nbest writing had something to learn.  I fancifully added that we too\nshould peradventure be gilded by the legend, should be pointed at for\nhaving listened, for having actually heard.  Gravener, who had glanced at\nhis watch and discovered it was midnight, found to all this a retort\nbeautifully characteristic of him.\n\n“There’s one little fact to be borne in mind in the presence equally of\nthe best talk and of the worst.”  He looked, in saying this, as if he\nmeant great things, and I was sure he could only mean once more that\nneither of them mattered if a man wasn’t a real gentleman.  Perhaps it\nwas what he did mean; he deprived me however of the exultation of being\nright by putting the truth in a slightly different way.  “The only thing\nthat really counts for one’s estimate of a person is his conduct.”  He\nhad his watch still in his palm, and I reproached him with unfair play in\nhaving ascertained beforehand that it was now the hour at which I always\ngave in.  My pleasantry so far failed to mollify him that he promptly\nadded that to the rule he had just enunciated there was absolutely no\nexception.\n\n“None whatever?”\n\n“None whatever.”\n\n“Trust me then to try to be good at any price!” I laughed as I went with\nhim to the door.  “I declare I will be, if I have to be horrible!”\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nIF that first night was one of the liveliest, or at any rate was the\nfreshest, of my exaltations, there was another, four years later, that\nwas one of my great discomposures.  Repetition, I well knew by this time,\nwas the secret of Saltram’s power to alienate, and of course one would\nnever have seen him at his finest if one hadn’t seen him in his remorses.\nThey set in mainly at this season and were magnificent, elemental,\norchestral.  I was quite aware that one of these atmospheric disturbances\nwas now due; but none the less, in our arduous attempt to set him on his\nfeet as a lecturer, it was impossible not to feel that two failures were\na large order, as we said, for a short course of five.  This was the\nsecond time, and it was past nine o’clock; the audience, a muster\nunprecedented and really encouraging, had fortunately the attitude of\nblandness that might have been looked for in persons whom the promise of\n(if I’m not mistaken) An Analysis of Primary Ideas had drawn to the\nneighbourhood of Upper Baker Street.  There was in those days in that\nregion a petty lecture-hall to be secured on terms as moderate as the\nfunds left at our disposal by the irrepressible question of the\nmaintenance of five small Saltrams—I include the mother—and one large\none.  By the time the Saltrams, of different sizes, were all maintained\nwe had pretty well poured out the oil that might have lubricated the\nmachinery for enabling the most original of men to appear to maintain\nthem.\n\nIt was I, the other time, who had been forced into the breach, standing\nup there for an odious lamplit moment to explain to half a dozen thin\nbenches, where earnest brows were virtuously void of anything so cynical\nas a suspicion, that we couldn’t so much as put a finger on Mr. Saltram.\nThere was nothing to plead but that our scouts had been out from the\nearly hours and that we were afraid that on one of his walks abroad—he\ntook one, for meditation, whenever he was to address such a company—some\naccident had disabled or delayed him.  The meditative walks were a\nfiction, for he never, that any one could discover, prepared anything but\na magnificent prospectus; hence his circulars and programmes, of which I\npossess an almost complete collection, are the solemn ghosts of\ngenerations never born.  I put the case, as it seemed to me, at the best;\nbut I admit I had been angry, and Kent Mulville was shocked at my want of\npublic optimism.  This time therefore I left the excuses to his more\npractised patience, only relieving myself in response to a direct appeal\nfrom a young lady next whom, in the hall, I found myself sitting.  My\nposition was an accident, but if it had been calculated the reason would\nscarce have eluded an observer of the fact that no one else in the room\nhad an approach to an appearance.  Our philosopher’s “tail” was\ndeplorably limp.  This visitor was the only person who looked at her\nease, who had come a little in the spirit of adventure.  She seemed to\ncarry amusement in her handsome young head, and her presence spoke, a\nlittle mystifyingly, of a sudden extension of Saltram’s sphere of\ninfluence.  He was doing better than we hoped, and he had chosen such an\noccasion, of all occasions, to succumb to heaven knew which of his fond\ninfirmities.  The young lady produced an impression of auburn hair and\nblack velvet, and had on her other hand a companion of obscurer type,\npresumably a waiting-maid.  She herself might perhaps have been a foreign\ncountess, and before she addressed me I had beguiled our sorry interval\nby finding in her a vague recall of the opening of some novel of Madame\nSand.  It didn’t make her more fathomable to pass in a few minutes from\nthis to the certitude that she was American; it simply engendered\ndepressing reflexions as to the possible check to contributions from\nBoston.  She asked me if, as a person apparently more initiated, I would\nrecommend further waiting, and I answered that if she considered I was on\nmy honour I would privately deprecate it.  Perhaps she didn’t; at any\nrate our talk took a turn that prolonged it till she became aware we were\nleft almost alone.  I presently ascertained she knew Mrs. Saltram, and\nthis explained in a manner the miracle.  The brotherhood of the friends\nof the husband was as nothing to the brotherhood, or perhaps I should say\nthe sisterhood, of the friends of the wife.  Like the Kent Mulvilles I\nbelonged to both fraternities, and even better than they I think I had\nsounded the abyss of Mrs. Saltram’s wrongs.  She bored me to extinction,\nand I knew but too well how she had bored her husband; but there were\nthose who stood by her, the most efficient of whom were indeed the\nhandful of poor Saltram’s backers.  They did her liberal justice, whereas\nher mere patrons and partisans had nothing but hatred for our\nphilosopher.  I’m bound to say it was we, however—we of both camps, as it\nwere—who had always done most for her.\n\nI thought my young lady looked rich—I scarcely knew why; and I hoped she\nhad put her hand in her pocket.  I soon made her out, however, not at all\na fine fanatic—she was but a generous, irresponsible enquirer.  She had\ncome to England to see her aunt, and it was at her aunt’s she had met the\ndreary lady we had all so much on our mind.  I saw she’d help to pass the\ntime when she observed that it was a pity this lady wasn’t intrinsically\nmore interesting.  That was refreshing, for it was an article of faith in\nMrs. Saltram’s circle—at least among those who scorned to know her horrid\nhusband—that she was attractive on her merits.  She was in truth a most\nordinary person, as Saltram himself would have been if he hadn’t been a\nprodigy.  The question of vulgarity had no application to him, but it was\na measure his wife kept challenging you to apply.  I hasten to add that\nthe consequences of your doing so were no sufficient reason for his\nhaving left her to starve.  “He doesn’t seem to have much force of\ncharacter,” said my young lady; at which I laughed out so loud that my\ndeparting friends looked back at me over their shoulders as if I were\nmaking a joke of their discomfiture.  My joke probably cost Saltram a\nsubscription or two, but it helped me on with my interlocutress.  “She\nsays he drinks like a fish,” she sociably continued, “and yet she allows\nthat his mind’s wonderfully clear.”  It was amusing to converse with a\npretty girl who could talk of the clearness of Saltram’s mind.  I\nexpected next to hear she had been assured he was awfully clever.  I\ntried to tell her—I had it almost on my conscience—what was the proper\nway to regard him; an effort attended perhaps more than ever on this\noccasion with the usual effect of my feeling that I wasn’t after all very\nsure of it.  She had come to-night out of high curiosity—she had wanted\nto learn this proper way for herself.  She had read some of his papers\nand hadn’t understood them; but it was at home, at her aunt’s, that her\ncuriosity had been kindled—kindled mainly by his wife’s remarkable\nstories of his want of virtue.  “I suppose they ought to have kept me\naway,” my companion dropped, “and I suppose they’d have done so if I\nhadn’t somehow got an idea that he’s fascinating.  In fact Mrs. Saltram\nherself says he is.”\n\n“So you came to see where the fascination resides?  Well, you’ve seen!”\n\nMy young lady raised fine eyebrows.  “Do you mean in his bad faith?”\n\n“In the extraordinary effects of it; his possession, that is, of some\nquality or other that condemns us in advance to forgive him the\nhumiliation, as I may call it, to which he has subjected us.”\n\n“The humiliation?”\n\n“Why mine, for instance, as one of his guarantors, before you as the\npurchaser of a ticket.”\n\nShe let her charming gay eyes rest on me.  “You don’t look humiliated a\nbit, and if you did I should let you off, disappointed as I am; for the\nmysterious quality you speak of is just the quality I came to see.”\n\n“Oh, you can’t ‘see’ it!” I cried.\n\n“How then do you get at it?”\n\n“You don’t!  You mustn’t suppose he’s good-looking,” I added.\n\n“Why his wife says he’s lovely!”\n\nMy hilarity may have struck her as excessive, but I confess it broke out\nafresh.  Had she acted only in obedience to this singular plea, so\ncharacteristic, on Mrs. Saltram’s part, of what was irritating in the\nnarrowness of that lady’s point of view?  “Mrs. Saltram,” I explained,\n“undervalues him where he’s strongest, so that, to make up for it\nperhaps, she overpraises him where he’s weak.  He’s not, assuredly,\nsuperficially attractive; he’s middle-aged, fat, featureless save for his\ngreat eyes.”\n\n“Yes, his great eyes,” said my young lady attentively.  She had evidently\nheard all about his great eyes—the beaux yeux for which alone we had\nreally done it all.\n\n“They’re tragic and splendid—lights on a dangerous coast.  But he moves\nbadly and dresses worse, and altogether he’s anything but smart.”\n\nMy companion, who appeared to reflect on this, after a moment appealed.\n“Do you call him a real gentleman?”\n\nI started slightly at the question, for I had a sense of recognising it:\nGeorge Gravener, years before, that first flushed night, had put me face\nto face with it.  It had embarrassed me then, but it didn’t embarrass me\nnow, for I had lived with it and overcome it and disposed of it.  “A real\ngentleman?  Emphatically not!”\n\nMy promptitude surprised her a little, but I quickly felt how little it\nwas to Gravener I was now talking.  “Do you say that because he’s—what do\nyou call it in England?—of humble extraction?”\n\n“Not a bit.  His father was a country school-master and his mother the\nwidow of a sexton, but that has nothing to do with it.  I say it simply\nbecause I know him well.”\n\n“But isn’t it an awful drawback?”\n\n“Awful—quite awful.”\n\n“I mean isn’t it positively fatal?”\n\n“Fatal to what?  Not to his magnificent vitality.”\n\nAgain she had a meditative moment.  “And is his magnificent vitality the\ncause of his vices?”\n\n“Your questions are formidable, but I’m glad you put them.  I was\nthinking of his noble intellect.  His vices, as you say, have been much\nexaggerated: they consist mainly after all in one comprehensive defect.”\n\n“A want of will?”\n\n“A want of dignity.”\n\n“He doesn’t recognise his obligations?”\n\n“On the contrary, he recognises them with effusion, especially in public:\nhe smiles and bows and beckons across the street to them.  But when they\npass over he turns away, and he speedily loses them in the crowd.  The\nrecognition’s purely spiritual—it isn’t in the least social.  So he\nleaves all his belongings to other people to take care of.  He accepts\nfavours, loans, sacrifices—all with nothing more deterrent than an agony\nof shame.  Fortunately we’re a little faithful band, and we do what we\ncan.”  I held my tongue about the natural children, engendered, to the\nnumber of three, in the wantonness of his youth.  I only remarked that he\ndid make efforts—often tremendous ones.  “But the efforts,” I said,\n“never come to much: the only things that come to much are the\nabandonments, the surrenders.”\n\n“And how much do they come to?”\n\n“You’re right to put it as if we had a big bill to pay, but, as I’ve told\nyou before, your questions are rather terrible.  They come, these mere\nexercises of genius, to a great sum total of poetry, of philosophy, a\nmighty mass of speculation, notation, quotation.  The genius is there,\nyou see, to meet the surrender; but there’s no genius to support the\ndefence.”\n\n“But what is there, after all, at his age, to show?”\n\n“In the way of achievement recognised and reputation established?” I\nasked.  “To ‘show’ if you will, there isn’t much, since his writing,\nmostly, isn’t as fine, isn’t certainly as showy, as his talk.  Moreover\ntwo-thirds of his work are merely colossal projects and announcements.\n‘Showing’ Frank Saltram is often a poor business,” I went on: “we\nendeavoured, you’ll have observed, to show him to-night!  However, if he\nhad lectured he’d have lectured divinely.  It would just have been his\ntalk.”\n\n“And what would his talk just have been?”\n\nI was conscious of some ineffectiveness, as well perhaps as of a little\nimpatience, as I replied: “The exhibition of a splendid intellect.”  My\nyoung lady looked not quite satisfied at this, but as I wasn’t prepared\nfor another question I hastily pursued: “The sight of a great suspended\nswinging crystal—huge lucid lustrous, a block of light—flashing back\nevery impression of life and every possibility of thought!”\n\nThis gave her something to turn over till we had passed out to the dusky\nporch of the hall, in front of which the lamps of a quiet brougham were\nalmost the only thing Saltram’s treachery hadn’t extinguished.  I went\nwith her to the door of her carriage, out of which she leaned a moment\nafter she had thanked me and taken her seat.  Her smile even in the\ndarkness was pretty.  “I do want to see that crystal!”\n\n“You’ve only to come to the next lecture.”\n\n“I go abroad in a day or two with my aunt.”\n\n“Wait over till next week,” I suggested.  “It’s quite worth it.”\n\nShe became grave.  “Not unless he really comes!”  At which the brougham\nstarted off, carrying her away too fast, fortunately for my manners, to\nallow me to exclaim “Ingratitude!”\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nMRS. SALTRAM made a great affair of her right to be informed where her\nhusband had been the second evening he failed to meet his audience.  She\ncame to me to ascertain, but I couldn’t satisfy her, for in spite of my\ningenuity I remained in ignorance.  It wasn’t till much later that I\nfound this had not been the case with Kent Mulville, whose hope for the\nbest never twirled the thumbs of him more placidly than when he happened\nto know the worst.  He had known it on the occasion I speak of—that is\nimmediately after.  He was impenetrable then, but ultimately confessed.\nWhat he confessed was more than I shall now venture to make public.  It\nwas of course familiar to me that Saltram was incapable of keeping the\nengagements which, after their separation, he had entered into with\nregard to his wife, a deeply wronged, justly resentful, quite\nirreproachable and insufferable person.  She often appeared at my\nchambers to talk over his lapses; for if, as she declared, she had washed\nher hands of him, she had carefully preserved the water of this ablution,\nwhich she handed about for analysis.  She had arts of her own of exciting\none’s impatience, the most infallible of which was perhaps her assumption\nthat we were kind to her because we liked her.  In reality her personal\nfall had been a sort of social rise—since I had seen the moment when, in\nour little conscientious circle, her desolation almost made her the\nfashion.  Her voice was grating and her children ugly; moreover she hated\nthe good Mulvilles, whom I more and more loved.  They were the people who\nby doing most for her husband had in the long run done most for herself;\nand the warm confidence with which he had laid his length upon them was a\npressure gentle compared with her stiffer persuadability.  I’m bound to\nsay he didn’t criticise his benefactors, though practically he got tired\nof them; she, however, had the highest standards about eleemosynary\nforms.  She offered the odd spectacle of a spirit puffed up by\ndependence, and indeed it had introduced her to some excellent society.\nShe pitied me for not knowing certain people who aided her and whom she\ndoubtless patronised in turn for their luck in not knowing me.  I dare\nsay I should have got on with her better if she had had a ray of\nimagination—if it had occasionally seemed to occur to her to regard\nSaltram’s expressions of his nature in any other manner than as separate\nsubjects of woe.  They were all flowers of his character, pearls strung\non an endless thread; but she had a stubborn little way of challenging\nthem one after the other, as if she never suspected that he had a\ncharacter, such as it was, or that deficiencies might be organic; the\nirritating effect of a mind incapable of a generalisation.  One might\ndoubtless have overdone the idea that there was a general licence for\nsuch a man; but if this had happened it would have been through one’s\nfeeling that there could be none for such a woman.\n\nI recognised her superiority when I asked her about the aunt of the\ndisappointed young lady: it sounded like a sentence from an\nEnglish-French or other phrase-book.  She triumphed in what she told me\nand she may have triumphed still more in what she withheld.  My friend of\nthe other evening, Miss Anvoy, had but lately come to England; Lady\nCoxon, the aunt, had been established here for years in consequence of\nher marriage with the late Sir Gregory of that name.  She had a house in\nthe Regent’s Park, a Bath-chair and a fernery; and above all she had\nsympathy.  Mrs. Saltram had made her acquaintance through mutual friends.\nThis vagueness caused me to feel how much I was out of it and how large\nan independent circle Mrs. Saltram had at her command.  I should have\nbeen glad to know more about the disappointed young lady, but I felt I\nshould know most by not depriving her of her advantage, as she might have\nmysterious means of depriving me of my knowledge.  For the present,\nmoreover, this experience was stayed, Lady Coxon having in fact gone\nabroad accompanied by her niece.  The niece, besides being immensely\nclever, was an heiress, Mrs. Saltram said; the only daughter and the\nlight of the eyes of some great American merchant, a man, over there, of\nendless indulgences and dollars.  She had pretty clothes and pretty\nmanners, and she had, what was prettier still, the great thing of all.\nThe great thing of all for Mrs. Saltram was always sympathy, and she\nspoke as if during the absence of these ladies she mightn’t know where to\nturn for it.  A few months later indeed, when they had come back, her\ntone perceptibly changed: she alluded to them, on my leading her up to\nit, rather as to persons in her debt for favours received.  What had\nhappened I didn’t know, but I saw it would take only a little more or a\nlittle less to make her speak of them as thankless subjects of social\ncountenance—people for whom she had vainly tried to do something.  I\nconfess I saw how it wouldn’t be in a mere week or two that I should rid\nmyself of the image of Ruth Anvoy, in whose very name, when I learnt it,\nI found something secretly to like.  I should probably neither see her\nnor hear of her again: the knight’s widow (he had been mayor of\nClockborough) would pass away and the heiress would return to her\ninheritance.  I gathered with surprise that she had not communicated to\nhis wife the story of her attempt to hear Mr..Saltram, and I founded this\nreticence on the easy supposition that Mrs. Saltram had fatigued by\noverpressure the spring of the sympathy of which she boasted.  The girl\nat any rate would forget the small adventure, be distracted, take a\nhusband; besides which she would lack occasion to repeat her experiment.\n\nWe clung to the idea of the brilliant course, delivered without an\naccident, that, as a lecturer, would still make the paying public aware\nof our great man, but the fact remained that in the case of an\ninspiration so unequal there was treachery, there was fallacy at least,\nin the very conception of a series.  In our scrutiny of ways and means we\nwere inevitably subject to the old convention of the synopsis, the\nsyllabus, partly of course not to lose the advantage of his grand free\nhand in drawing up such things; but for myself I laughed at our playbills\neven while I stickled for them.  It was indeed amusing work to be\nscrupulous for Frank Saltram, who also at moments laughed about it, so\nfar as the comfort of a sigh so unstudied as to be cheerful might pass\nfor such a sound.  He admitted with a candour all his own that he was in\ntruth only to be depended on in the Mulvilles’ drawing-room.  “Yes,” he\nsuggestively allowed, “it’s there, I think, that I’m at my best; quite\nlate, when it gets toward eleven—and if I’ve not been too much worried.”\nWe all knew what too much worry meant; it meant too enslaved for the hour\nto the superstition of sobriety.  On the Saturdays I used to bring my\nportmanteau, so as not to have to think of eleven o’clock trains.  I had\na bold theory that as regards this temple of talk and its altars of\ncushioned chintz, its pictures and its flowers, its large fireside and\nclear lamplight, we might really arrive at something if the Mulvilles\nwould but charge for admission.  Here it was, however, that they\nshamelessly broke down; as there’s a flaw in every perfection this was\nthe inexpugnable refuge of their egotism.  They declined to make their\nsaloon a market, so that Saltram’s golden words continued the sole coin\nthat rang there.  It can have happened to no man, however, to be paid a\ngreater price than such an enchanted hush as surrounded him on his\ngreatest nights.  The most profane, on these occasions, felt a presence;\nall minor eloquence grew dumb.  Adelaide Mulville, for the pride of her\nhospitality, anxiously watched the door or stealthily poked the fire.  I\nused to call it the music-room, for we had anticipated Bayreuth.  The\nvery gates of the kingdom of light seemed to open and the horizon of\nthought to flash with the beauty of a sunrise at sea.\n\nIn the consideration of ways and means, the sittings of our little board,\nwe were always conscious of the creak of Mrs. Saltram’s shoes.  She\nhovered, she interrupted, she almost presided, the state of affairs being\nmostly such as to supply her with every incentive for enquiring what was\nto be done next.  It was the pressing pursuit of this knowledge that, in\nconcatenations of omnibuses and usually in very wet weather, led her so\noften to my door.  She thought us spiritless creatures with editors and\npublishers; but she carried matters to no great effect when she\npersonally pushed into back-shops.  She wanted all moneys to be paid to\nherself: they were otherwise liable to such strange adventures.  They\ntrickled away into the desert—they were mainly at best, alas, a slender\nstream.  The editors and the publishers were the last people to take this\nremarkable thinker at the valuation that has now pretty well come to be\nestablished.  The former were half-distraught between the desire to “cut”\nhim and the difficulty of finding a crevice for their shears; and when a\nvolume on this or that portentous subject was proposed to the latter they\nsuggested alternative titles which, as reported to our friend, brought\ninto his face the noble blank melancholy that sometimes made it handsome.\nThe title of an unwritten book didn’t after all much matter, but some\nmasterpiece of Saltram’s may have died in his bosom of the shudder with\nwhich it was then convulsed.  The ideal solution, failing the fee at Kent\nMulville’s door, would have been some system of subscription to projected\ntreatises with their non-appearance provided for—provided for, I mean, by\nthe indulgence of subscribers.  The author’s real misfortune was that\nsubscribers were so wretchedly literal.  When they tastelessly enquired\nwhy publication hadn’t ensued I was tempted to ask who in the world had\never been so published.  Nature herself had brought him out in voluminous\nform, and the money was simply a deposit on borrowing the work.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nI WAS doubtless often a nuisance to my friends in those years; but there\nwere sacrifices I declined to make, and I never passed the hat to George\nGravener.  I never forgot our little discussion in Ebury Street, and I\nthink it stuck in my throat to have to treat him to the avowal I had\nfound so easy to Mss Anvoy.  It had cost me nothing to confide to this\ncharming girl, but it would have cost me much to confide to the friend of\nmy youth, that the character of the “real gentleman” wasn’t an attribute\nof the man I took such pains for.  Was this because I had already\ngeneralised to the point of perceiving that women are really the\nunfastidious sex?  I knew at any rate that Gravener, already quite in\nview but still hungry and frugal, had naturally enough more ambition than\ncharity.  He had sharp aims for stray sovereigns, being in view most from\nthe tall steeple of Clockborough.  His immediate ambition was to occupy à\nlui seul the field of vision of that smokily-seeing city, and all his\nmovements and postures were calculated for the favouring angle.  The\nmovement of the hand as to the pocket had thus to alternate gracefully\nwith the posture of the hand on the heart.  He talked to Clockborough in\nshort only less beguilingly than Frank Saltram talked to his electors;\nwith the difference to our credit, however, that we had already voted and\nthat our candidate had no antagonist but himself.  He had more than once\nbeen at Wimbledon—it was Mrs. Mulville’s work not mine—and by the time\nthe claret was served had seen the god descend.  He took more pains to\nswing his censer than I had expected, but on our way back to town he\nforestalled any little triumph I might have been so artless as to express\nby the observation that such a man was—a hundred times!—a man to use and\nnever a man to be used by.  I remember that this neat remark humiliated\nme almost as much as if virtually, in the fever of broken slumbers, I\nhadn’t often made it myself.  The difference was that on Gravener’s part\na force attached to it that could never attach to it on mine.  He was\nable to use people—he had the machinery; and the irony of Saltram’s being\nmade showy at Clockborough came out to me when he said, as if he had no\nmemory of our original talk and the idea were quite fresh to him: “I hate\nhis type, you know, but I’ll be hanged if I don’t put some of those\nthings in.  I can find a place for them: we might even find a place for\nthe fellow himself.”  I myself should have had some fear—not, I need\nscarcely say, for the “things” themselves, but for some other things very\nnear them; in fine for the rest of my eloquence.\n\nLater on I could see that the oracle of Wimbledon was not in this case so\nappropriate as he would have been had the polities of the gods only\ncoincided more exactly with those of the party.  There was a distinct\nmoment when, without saying anything more definite to me, Gravener\nentertained the idea of annexing Mr. Saltram.  Such a project was\ndelusive, for the discovery of analogies between his body of doctrine and\nthat pressed from headquarters upon Clockborough—the bottling, in a word,\nof the air of those lungs for convenient public uncorking in\ncorn-exchanges—was an experiment for which no one had the leisure.  The\nonly thing would have been to carry him massively about, paid, caged,\nclipped; to turn him on for a particular occasion in a particular\nchannel.  Frank Saltram’s channel, however, was essentially not\ncalculable, and there was no knowing what disastrous floods might have\nensued.  For what there would have been to do The Empire, the great\nnewspaper, was there to look to; but it was no new misfortune that there\nwere delicate situations in which The Empire broke down.  In fine there\nwas an instinctive apprehension that a clever young journalist\ncommissioned to report on Mr. Saltram might never come back from the\nerrand.  No one knew better than George Gravener that that was a time\nwhen prompt returns counted double.  If he therefore found our friend an\nexasperating waste of orthodoxy it was because of his being, as he said,\npoor Gravener, up in the clouds, not because he was down in the dust.\nThe man would have been, just as he was, a real enough gentleman if he\ncould have helped to put in a real gentleman.  Gravener’s great objection\nto the actual member was that he was not one.\n\nLady Coxon had a fine old house, a house with “grounds,” at Clockborough,\nwhich she had let; but after she returned from abroad I learned from Mrs.\nSaltram that the lease had fallen in and that she had gone down to resume\npossession.  I could see the faded red livery, the big square shoulders,\nthe high-walled garden of this decent abode.  As the rumble of\ndissolution grew louder the suitor would have pressed his suit, and I\nfound myself hoping the politics of the late Mayor’s widow wouldn’t be\nsuch as to admonish her to ask him to dinner; perhaps indeed I went so\nfar as to pray, they would naturally form a bar to any contact.  I tried\nto focus the many-buttoned page, in the daily airing, as he perhaps even\npushed the Bath-chair over somebody’s toes.  I was destined to hear, none\nthe less, through Mrs. Saltram—who, I afterwards learned, was in\ncorrespondence with Lady Coxon’s housekeeper—that Gravener was known to\nhave spoken of the habitation I had in my eye as the pleasantest thing at\nClockborough.  On his part, I was sure, this was the voice not of envy\nbut of experience.  The vivid scene was now peopled, and I could see him\nin the old-time garden with Miss Anvoy, who would be certain, and very\njustly, to think him good-looking.  It would be too much to describe\nmyself as troubled by this play of surmise; but I occur to remember the\nrelief, singular enough, of feeling it suddenly brushed away by an\nannoyance really much greater; an annoyance the result of its happening\nto come over me about that time with a rush that I was simply ashamed of\nFrank Saltram.  There were limits after all, and my mark at last had been\nreached.\n\nI had had my disgusts, if I may allow myself to-day such an expression;\nbut this was a supreme revolt.  Certain things cleared up in my mind,\ncertain values stood out.  It was all very well to have an unfortunate\ntemperament; there was nothing so unfortunate as to have, for practical\npurposes, nothing else.  I avoided George Gravener at this moment and\nreflected that at such a time I should do so most effectually by leaving\nEngland.  I wanted to forget Frank Saltram—that was all.  I didn’t want\nto do anything in the world to him but that.  Indignation had withered on\nthe stalk, and I felt that one could pity him as much as one ought only\nby never thinking of him again.  It wasn’t for anything he had done to\nme; it was for what he had done to the Mulvilles.  Adelaide cried about\nit for a week, and her husband, profiting by the example so signally\ngiven him of the fatal effect of a want of character, left the letter,\nthe drop too much, unanswered.  The letter, an incredible one, addressed\nby Saltram to Wimbledon during a stay with the Pudneys at Ramsgate, was\nthe central feature of the incident, which, however, had many features,\neach more painful than whichever other we compared it with.  The Pudneys\nhad behaved shockingly, but that was no excuse.  Base ingratitude, gross\nindecency—one had one’s choice only of such formulas as that the more\nthey fitted the less they gave one rest.  These are dead aches now, and I\nam under no obligation, thank heaven, to be definite about the business.\nThere are things which if I had had to tell them—well, would have stopped\nme off here altogether.\n\nI went abroad for the general election, and if I don’t know how much, on\nthe Continent, I forgot, I at least know how much I missed, him.  At a\ndistance, in a foreign land, ignoring, abjuring, unlearning him, I\ndiscovered what he had done for me.  I owed him, oh unmistakeably,\ncertain noble conceptions; I had lighted my little taper at his smoky\nlamp, and lo it continued to twinkle.  But the light it gave me just\nshowed me how much more I wanted.  I was pursued of course by letters\nfrom Mrs. Saltram which I didn’t scruple not to read, though quite aware\nher embarrassments couldn’t but be now of the gravest.  I sacrificed to\npropriety by simply putting them away, and this is how, one day as my\nabsence drew to an end, my eye, while I rummaged in my desk for another\npaper, was caught by a name on a leaf that had detached itself from the\npacket.  The allusion was to Miss Anvoy, who, it appeared, was engaged to\nbe married to Mr. George Gravener; and the news was two months old.  A\ndirect question of Mrs. Saltram’s had thus remained unanswered—she had\nenquired of me in a postscript what sort of man this aspirant to such a\nhand might be.  The great other fact about him just then was that he had\nbeen triumphantly returned for Clockborough in the interest of the party\nthat had swept the country—so that I might easily have referred Mrs.\nSaltram to the journals of the day.  Yet when I at last wrote her that I\nwas coming home and would discharge my accumulated burden by seeing her,\nI but remarked in regard to her question that she must really put it to\nMiss Anvoy.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\n\nI HAD almost avoided the general election, but some of its consequences,\non my return, had smartly to be faced.  The season, in London, began to\nbreathe again and to flap its folded wings.  Confidence, under the new\nMinistry, was understood to be reviving, and one of the symptoms, in a\nsocial body, was a recovery of appetite.  People once more fed together,\nand it happened that, one Saturday night, at somebody’s house, I fed with\nGeorge Gravener.  When the ladies left the room I moved up to where he\nsat and begged to congratulate him.  “On my election?” he asked after a\nmoment; so that I could feign, jocosely, not to have heard of that\ntriumph and to be alluding to the rumour of a victory still more\npersonal.  I dare say I coloured however, for his political success had\nmomentarily passed out of my mind.  What was present to it was that he\nwas to marry that beautiful girl; and yet his question made me conscious\nof some discomposure—I hadn’t intended to put this before everything.  He\nhimself indeed ought gracefully to have done so, and I remember thinking\nthe whole man was in this assumption that in expressing my sense of what\nhe had won I had fixed my thoughts on his “seat.”  We straightened the\nmatter out, and he was so much lighter in hand than I had lately seen him\nthat his spirits might well have been fed from a twofold source.  He was\nso good as to say that he hoped I should soon make the acquaintance of\nMiss Anvoy, who, with her aunt, was presently coming up to town.  Lady\nCoxon, in the country, had been seriously unwell, and this had delayed\ntheir arrival.  I told him I had heard the marriage would be a splendid\none; on which, brightened and humanised by his luck, he laughed and said\n“Do you mean for her?”  When I had again explained what I meant he went\non: “Oh she’s an American, but you’d scarcely know it; unless, perhaps,”\nhe added, “by her being used to more money than most girls in England,\neven the daughters of rich men.  That wouldn’t in the least do for a\nfellow like me, you know, if it wasn’t for the great liberality of her\nfather.  He really has been most kind, and everything’s quite\nsatisfactory.”  He added that his eldest brother had taken a tremendous\nfancy to her and that during a recent visit at Coldfield she had nearly\nwon over Lady Maddock.  I gathered from something he dropped later on\nthat the free-handed gentleman beyond the seas had not made a settlement,\nbut had given a handsome present and was apparently to be looked to,\nacross the water, for other favours.  People are simplified alike by\ngreat contentments and great yearnings, and, whether or no it was\nGravener’s directness that begot my own, I seem to recall that in some\nturn taken by our talk he almost imposed it on me as an act of decorum to\nask if Miss Anvoy had also by chance expectations from her aunt.  My\nenquiry drew out that Lady Coxon, who was the oddest of women, would have\nin any contingency to act under her late husband’s will, which was odder\nstill, saddling her with a mass of queer obligations complicated with\nqueer loopholes.  There were several dreary people, Coxon cousins, old\nmaids, to whom she would have more or less to minister.  Gravener\nlaughed, without saying no, when I suggested that the young lady might\ncome in through a loophole; then suddenly, as if he suspected my turning\na lantern on him, he declared quite dryly: “That’s all rot—one’s moved by\nother springs!”\n\nA fortnight later, at Lady Coxon’s own house, I understood well enough\nthe springs one was moved by.  Gravener had spoken of me there as an old\nfriend, and I received a gracious invitation to dine.  The Knight’s widow\nwas again indisposed—she had succumbed at the eleventh hour; so that I\nfound Miss Anvoy bravely playing hostess without even Gravener’s help,\nsince, to make matters worse, he had just sent up word that the House,\nthe insatiable House, with which he supposed he had contracted for easier\nterms, positively declined to release him.  I was struck with the\ncourage, the grace and gaiety of the young lady left thus to handle the\nfauna and flora of the Regent’s Park.  I did what I could to help her to\nclassify them, after I had recovered from the confusion of seeing her\nslightly disconcerted at perceiving in the guest introduced by her\nintended the gentleman with whom she had had that talk about Frank\nSaltram.  I had at this moment my first glimpse of the fact that she was\na person who could carry a responsibility; but I leave the reader to\njudge of my sense of the aggravation, for either of us, of such a burden,\nwhen I heard the servant announce Mrs. Saltram.  From what immediately\npassed between the two ladies I gathered that the latter had been sent\nfor post-haste to fill the gap created by the absence of the mistress of\nthe house.  “Good!” I remember crying, “she’ll be put by me;” and my\napprehension was promptly justified.  Mrs. Saltram taken in to dinner,\nand taken in as a consequence of an appeal to her amiability, was Mrs.\nSaltram with a vengeance.  I asked myself what Miss Anvoy meant by doing\nsuch things, but the only answer I arrived at was that Gravener was\nverily fortunate.  She hadn’t happened to tell him of her visit to Upper\nBaker Street, but she’d certainly tell him to-morrow; not indeed that\nthis would make him like any better her having had the innocence to\ninvite such a person as Mrs. Saltram on such an occasion.  It could only\nstrike me that I had never seen a young woman put such ignorance into her\ncleverness, such freedom into her modesty; this, I think, was when, after\ndinner, she said to me frankly, with almost jubilant mirth: “Oh you don’t\nadmire Mrs. Saltram?”  Why should I?  This was truly a young person\nwithout guile.  I had briefly to consider before I could reply that my\nobjection to the lady named was the objection often uttered about people\nmet at the social board—I knew all her stories.  Then as Miss Anvoy\nremained momentarily vague I added: “Those about her husband.”\n\n“Oh yes, but there are some new ones.”\n\n“None for me.  Ah novelty would be pleasant!”\n\n“Doesn’t it appear that of late he has been particularly horrid?”\n\n“His fluctuations don’t matter”, I returned, “for at night all cats are\ngrey.  You saw the shade of this one the night we waited for him\ntogether.  What will you have?  He has no dignity.”\n\nMiss Anvoy, who had been introducing with her American distinctness,\nlooked encouragingly round at some of the combinations she had risked.\n“It’s too bad I can’t see him.”\n\n“You mean Gravener won’t let you?”\n\n“I haven’t asked him.  He lets me do everything.”\n\n“But you know he knows him and wonders what some of us see in him.”\n\n“We haven’t happened to talk of him,” the girl said.\n\n“Get him to take you some day out to see the Mulvilles.”\n\n“I thought Mr. Saltram had thrown the Mulvilles over.”\n\n“Utterly.  But that won’t prevent his being planted there again, to bloom\nlike a rose, within a month or two.”\n\nMiss Anvoy thought a moment.  Then, “I should like to see them,” she said\nwith her fostering smile.\n\n“They’re tremendously worth it.  You mustn’t miss them.”\n\n“I’ll make George take me,” she went on as Mrs. Saltram came up to\ninterrupt us.  She sniffed at this unfortunate as kindly as she had\nsmiled at me and, addressing the question to her, continued: “But the\nchance of a lecture—one of the wonderful lectures?  Isn’t there another\ncourse announced?”\n\n“Another?  There are about thirty!” I exclaimed, turning away and feeling\nMrs. Saltram’s little eyes in my back.  A few days after this I heard\nthat Gravener’s marriage was near at hand—was settled for Whitsuntide;\nbut as no invitation had reached me I had my doubts, and there presently\ncame to me in fact the report of a postponement.  Something was the\nmatter; what was the matter was supposed to be that Lady Coxon was now\ncritically ill.  I had called on her after my dinner in the Regent’s\nPark,\nkindness Lady Coxon had shown her.  Gravener declared this to be false;\nLady Coxon, who didn’t care for her, hadn’t seen her three times.  The\nonly foundation for it was that Miss Anvoy, who used, poor girl, to chuck\nmoney about in a manner she must now regret, had for an hour seen in the\nmiserable woman—you could never know what she’d see in people—an\ninteresting pretext for the liberality with which her nature overflowed.\nBut even Miss Anvoy was now quite tired of her.  Gravener told me more\nabout the crash in New York and the annoyance it had been to him, and we\nalso glanced here and there in other directions; but by the time we got\nto Doncaster the principal thing he had let me see was that he was\nkeeping something back.  We stopped at that station, and, at the\ncarriage-door, some one made a movement to get in.  Gravener uttered a\nsound of impatience, and I felt sure that but for this I should have had\nthe secret.  Then the intruder, for some reason, spared us his company;\nwe started afresh, and my hope of a disclosure returned.  My companion\nheld his tongue, however, and I pretended to go to sleep; in fact I\nreally dozed for discouragement.  When I reopened my eyes he was looking\nat me with an injured air.  He tossed away with some vivacity the remnant\nof a cigarette and then said: “If you’re not too sleepy I want to put you\na case.”  I answered that I’d make every effort to attend, and welcomed\nthe note of interest when he went on: “As I told you a while ago, Lady\nCoxon, poor dear, is demented.”  His tone had much behind it—was full of\npromise.  I asked if her ladyship’s misfortune were a trait of her malady\nor only of her character, and he pronounced it a product of both.  The\ncase he wanted to put to me was a matter on which it concerned him to\nhave the impression—the judgement, he might also say—of another person.\n“I mean of the average intelligent man, but you see I take what I can\nget.” There would be the technical, the strictly legal view; then there\nwould be the way the question would strike a man of the world.  He had\nlighted another cigarette while he talked, and I saw he was glad to have\nit to handle when he brought out at last, with a laugh slightly\nartificial: “In fact it’s a subject on which Miss Anvoy and I are pulling\ndifferent ways.”\n\n“And you want me to decide between you?  I decide in advance for Miss\nAnvoy.”\n\n“In advance—that’s quite right.  That’s how I decided when I proposed to\nher.  But my story will interest you only so far as your mind isn’t made\nup.”  Gravener puffed his cigarette a minute and then continued: “Are you\nfamiliar with the idea of the Endowment of Research?”\n\n“Of Research?” I was at sea a moment.\n\n“I give you Lady Coxon’s phrase.  She has it on the brain.”\n\n“She wishes to endow—?”\n\n“Some earnest and ‘loyal’ seeker,” Gravener said.  “It was a sketchy\ndesign of her late husband’s, and he handed it on to her; setting apart\nin his will a sum of money of which she was to enjoy the interest for\nlife, but of which, should she eventually see her opportunity—the matter\nwas left largely to her discretion—she would best honour his memory by\ndetermining the exemplary public use.  This sum of money, no less than\nthirteen thousand pounds, was to be called The Coxon Fund; and poor Sir\nGregory evidently proposed to himself that The Coxon Fund should cover\nhis name with glory—be universally desired and admired.  He left his wife\na full declaration of his views, so far at least as that term may be\napplied to views vitiated by a vagueness really infantine.  A little\nlearning’s a dangerous thing, and a good citizen who happens to have been\nan ass is worse for a community than bad sewerage.  He’s worst of all\nwhen he’s dead, because then he can’t be stopped.  However, such as they\nwere, the poor man’s aspirations are now in his wife’s bosom, or\nfermenting rather in her foolish brain: it lies with her to carry them\nout.  But of course she must first catch her hare.”\n\n“Her earnest loyal seeker?”\n\n“The flower that blushes unseen for want of such a pecuniary independence\nas may aid the light that’s in it to shine upon the human race.  The\nindividual, in a word, who, having the rest of the machinery, the\nspiritual, the intellectual, is most hampered in his search.”\n\n“His search for what?”\n\n“For Moral Truth.  That’s what Sir Gregory calls it.”\n\nI burst out laughing.  “Delightful munificent Sir Gregory!  It’s a\ncharming idea.”\n\n“So Miss Anvoy thinks.”\n\n“Has she a candidate for the Fund?”\n\n“Not that I know of—and she’s perfectly reasonable about it.  But Lady\nCoxon has put the matter before her, and we’ve naturally had a lot of\ntalk.”\n\n“Talk that, as you’ve so interestingly intimated, has landed you in a\ndisagreement.”\n\n“She considers there’s something in it,” Gravener said.\n\n“And you consider there’s nothing?”\n\n“It seems to me a piece of solemn twaddle—which can’t fail to be attended\nwith consequences certainly grotesque and possibly immoral.  To begin\nwith, fancy constituting an endowment without establishing a tribunal—a\nbench of competent people, of judges.”\n\n“The sole tribunal is Lady Coxon?”\n\n“And any one she chooses to invite.”\n\n“But she has invited you,” I noted.\n\n“I’m not competent—I hate the thing.  Besides, she hasn’t,” my friend\nwent on.  “The real history of the matter, I take it, is that the\ninspiration was originally Lady Coxon’s own, that she infected him with\nit, and that the flattering option left her is simply his tribute to her\nbeautiful, her aboriginal enthusiasm.  She came to England forty years\nago, a thin transcendental Bostonian, and even her odd happy frumpy\nClockborough marriage never really materialised her.  She feels indeed\nthat she has become very British—as if that, as a process, as a ‘Werden,’\nas anything but an original sign of grace, were conceivable; but it’s\nprecisely what makes her cling to the notion of the ‘Fund’—cling to it as\nto a link with the ideal.”\n\n“How can she cling if she’s dying?”\n\n“Do you mean how can she act in the matter?” Gravener asked.  “That’s\nprecisely the question.  She can’t!  As she has never yet caught her\nhare, never spied out her lucky impostor—how should she, with the life\nshe has led?—her husband’s intention has come very near lapsing.  His\nidea, to do him justice, was that it _should_ lapse if exactly the right\nperson, the perfect mixture of genius and chill penury, should fail to\nturn up.  Ah the poor dear woman’s very particular—she says there must be\nno mistake.”\n\nI found all this quite thrilling—I took it in with avidity.  “And if she\ndies without doing anything, what becomes of the money?” I demanded.\n\n“It goes back to his family, if she hasn’t made some other disposition of\nit.”\n\n“She may do that then—she may divert it?”\n\n“Her hands are not tied.  She has a grand discretion.  The proof is that\nthree months ago she offered to make the proceeds over to her niece.”\n\n“For Miss Anvoy’s own use?”\n\n“For Miss Anvoy’s own use—on the occasion of her prospective marriage.\nShe was discouraged—the earnest seeker required so earnest a search.  She\nwas afraid of making a mistake; every one she could think of seemed\neither not earnest enough or not poor enough.  On the receipt of the\nfirst bad news about Mr. Anvoy’s affairs she proposed to Ruth to make the\nsacrifice for her.  As the situation in New York got worse she repeated\nher proposal.”\n\n“Which Miss Anvoy declined?”\n\n“Except as a formal trust.”\n\n“You mean except as committing herself legally to place the money?”\n\n“On the head of the deserving object, the great man frustrated,” said\nGravener.  “She only consents to act in the spirit of Sir Gregory’s\nscheme.”\n\n“And you blame her for that?” I asked with some intensity.\n\nMy tone couldn’t have been harsh, but he coloured a little and there was\na queer light in his eye.  “My dear fellow, if I ‘blamed’ the young lady\nI’m engaged to I shouldn’t immediately say it even to so old a friend as\nyou.”  I saw that some deep discomfort, some restless desire to be sided\nwith, reassuringly, approvingly mirrored, had been at the bottom of his\ndrifting so far, and I was genuinely touched by his confidence.  It was\ninconsistent with his habits; but being troubled about a woman was not,\nfor him, a habit: that itself was an inconsistency.  George Gravener\ncould stand straight enough before any other combination of forces.  It\namused me to think that the combination he had succumbed to had an\nAmerican accent, a transcendental aunt and an insolvent father; but all\nmy old loyalty to him mustered to meet this unexpected hint that I could\nhelp him.  I saw that I could from the insincere tone in which he\npursued: “I’ve criticised her of course, I’ve contended with her, and it\nhas been great fun.”  Yet it clearly couldn’t have been such great fun as\nto make it improper for me presently to ask if Miss Anvoy had nothing at\nall settled on herself.  To this he replied that she had only a trifle\nfrom her mother—a mere four hundred a year, which was exactly why it\nwould be convenient to him that she shouldn’t decline, in the face of\nthis total change in her prospects, an accession of income which would\ndistinctly help them to marry.  When I enquired if there were no other\nway in which so rich and so affectionate an aunt could cause the weight\nof her benevolence to be felt, he answered that Lady Coxon was\naffectionate indeed, but was scarcely to be called rich.  She could let\nher project of the Fund lapse for her niece’s benefit, but she couldn’t\ndo anything else.  She had been accustomed to regard her as tremendously\nprovided for, and she was up to her eyes in promises to anxious Coxons.\nShe was a woman of an inordinate conscience, and her conscience was now a\ndistress to her, hovering round her bed in irreconcilable forms of\nresentful husbands, portionless nieces and undiscoverable philosophers.\n\nWe were by this time getting into the whirr of fleeting platforms, the\nmultiplication of lights.  “I think you’ll find,” I said with a laugh,\n“that your predicament will disappear in the very fact that the\nphilosopher _is_ undiscoverable.”\n\nHe began to gather up his papers.  “Who can set a limit to the ingenuity\nof an extravagant woman?”\n\n“Yes, after all, who indeed?” I echoed as I recalled the extravagance\ncommemorated in Adelaide’s anecdote of Miss Anvoy and the thirty pounds.\n\n\n\n\nIX\n\n\nTHE thing I had been most sensible of in that talk with George Gravener\nwas the way Saltram’s name kept out of it.  It seemed to me at the time\nthat we were quite pointedly silent about him; but afterwards it appeared\nmore probable there had been on my companion’s part no conscious\navoidance.  Later on I was sure of this, and for the best of reasons—the\nsimple reason of my perceiving more completely that, for evil as well as\nfor good, he said nothing to Gravener’s imagination.  That honest man\ndidn’t fear him—he was too much disgusted with him.  No more did I,\ndoubtless, and for very much the same reason.  I treated my friend’s\nstory as an absolute confidence; but when before Christmas, by Mrs.\nSaltram, I was informed of Lady Coxon’s death without having had news of\nMiss Anvoy’s return, I found myself taking for granted we should hear no\nmore of these nuptials, in which, as obscurely unnatural, I now saw I had\nnever _too_ disconcertedly believed.  I began to ask myself how people\nwho suited each other so little could please each other so much.  The\ncharm was some material charm, some afffinity, exquisite doubtless, yet\nsuperficial some surrender to youth and beauty and passion, to force and\ngrace and fortune, happy accidents and easy contacts.  They might dote on\neach other’s persons, but how could they know each other’s souls?  How\ncould they have the same prejudices, how could they have the same\nhorizon?  Such questions, I confess, seemed quenched but not answered\nwhen, one day in February, going out to Wimbledon, I found our young lady\nin the house.  A passion that had brought her back across the wintry\nocean was as much of a passion as was needed.  No impulse equally strong\nindeed had drawn George Gravener to America; a circumstance on which,\nhowever, I reflected only long enough to remind myself that it was none\nof my business.  Ruth Anvoy was distinctly different, and I felt that the\ndifference was not simply that of her marks of mourning.  Mrs. Mulville\ntold me soon enough what it was: it was the difference between a handsome\ngirl with large expectations and a handsome girl with only four hundred a\nyear.  This explanation indeed didn’t wholly content me, not even when I\nlearned that her mourning had a double cause—learned that poor Mr. Anvoy,\ngiving way altogether, buried under the ruins of his fortune and leaving\nnext to nothing, had died a few weeks before.\n\n“So she has come out to marry George Gravener?” I commented.  “Wouldn’t\nit have been prettier of him to have saved her the trouble?”\n\n“Hasn’t the House just met?” Adelaide replied.  “And for Mr. Gravener the\nHouse—!”  Then she added: “I gather that her having come is exactly a\nsign that the marriage is a little shaky.  If it were quite all right a\nself-respecting girl like Ruth would have waited for him over there.”\n\nI noted that they were already Ruth and Adelaide, but what I said was:\n“Do you mean she’ll have had to return to _make_ it so?”\n\n“No, I mean that she must have come out for some reason independent of\nit.”  Adelaide could only surmise, however, as yet, and there was more,\nas we found, to be revealed.  Mrs. Mulville, on hearing of her arrival,\nhad brought the young lady out in the green landau for the Sunday.  The\nCoxons were in possession of the house in Regent’s Park, and Miss Anvoy\nwas in dreary lodgings.  George Gravener had been with her when Adelaide\ncalled, but had assented graciously enough to the little visit at\nWimbledon.  The carriage, with Mr. Saltram in it but not mentioned, had\nbeen sent off on some errand from which it was to return and pick the\nladies up.  Gravener had left them together, and at the end of an hour,\non the Saturday afternoon, the party of three had driven out to\nWimbledon.  This was the girl’s second glimpse of our great man, and I\nwas interested in asking Mrs. Mulville if the impression made by the\nfirst appeared to have been confirmed.  On her replying after\nconsideration, that of course with time and opportunity it couldn’t fail\nto be, but that she was disappointed, I was sufficiently struck with her\nuse of this last word to question her further.\n\n“Do you mean you’re disappointed because you judge Miss Anvoy to be?”\n\n“Yes; I hoped for a greater effect last evening.  We had two or three\npeople, but he scarcely opened his mouth.”\n\n“He’ll be all the better to-night,” I opined after a moment.  Then I\npursued: “What particular importance do you attach to the idea of her\nbeing impressed?”\n\nAdelaide turned her mild pale eyes on me as for rebuke of my levity.\n“Why the importance of her being as happy as _we_ are!”\n\nI’m afraid that at this my levity grew.  “Oh that’s a happiness almost\ntoo great to wish a person!”  I saw she hadn’t yet in her mind what I had\nin mine, and at any rate the visitor’s actual bliss was limited to a walk\nin the garden with Kent Mulville.  Later in the afternoon I also took\none, and I saw nothing of Miss Anvoy till dinner, at which we failed of\nthe company of Saltram, who had caused it to be reported that he was\nindisposed and lying down.  This made us, most of us—for there were other\nfriends present—convey to each other in silence some of the unutterable\nthings that in those years our eyes had inevitably acquired the art of\nexpressing.  If a fine little American enquirer hadn’t been there we\nwould have expressed them otherwise, and Adelaide would have pretended\nnot to hear.  I had seen her, before the very fact, abstract herself\nnobly; and I knew that more than once, to keep it from the servants,\nmanaging, dissimulating cleverly, she had helped her husband to carry him\nbodily to his room.  Just recently he had been so wise and so deep and so\nhigh that I had begun to get nervous—to wonder if by chance there were\nsomething behind it, if he were kept straight for instance by the\nknowledge that the hated Pudneys would have more to tell us if they\nchose.  He was lying low, but unfortunately it was common wisdom with us\nin this connexion that the biggest splashes took place in the quietest\npools.  We should have had a merry life indeed if all the splashes had\nsprinkled us as refreshingly as the waters we were even then to feel\nabout our ears.  Kent Mulville had been up to his room, but had come back\nwith a face that told as few tales as I had seen it succeed in telling on\nthe evening I waited in the lecture-room with Miss Anvoy.  I said to\nmyself that our friend had gone out, but it was a comfort that the\npresence of a comparative stranger deprived us of the dreary duty of\nsuggesting to each other, in respect of his errand, edifying\npossibilities in which we didn’t ourselves believe.  At ten o’clock he\ncame into the drawing-room with his waistcoat much awry but his eyes\nsending out great signals.  It was precisely with his entrance that I\nceased to be vividly conscious of him.  I saw that the crystal, as I had\ncalled it, had begun to swing, and I had need of my immediate attention\nfor Miss Anvoy.\n\nEven when I was told afterwards that he had, as we might have said\nto-day, broken the record, the manner in which that attention had been\nrewarded relieved me of a sense of loss.  I had of course a perfect\ngeneral consciousness that something great was going on: it was a little\nlike having been etherised to hear Herr Joachim play.  The old music was\nin the air; I felt the strong pulse of thought, the sink and swell, the\nflight, the poise, the plunge; but I knew something about one of the\nlisteners that nobody else knew, and Saltram’s monologue could reach me\nonly through that medium.  To this hour I’m of no use when, as a witness,\nI’m appealed to—for they still absurdly contend about it—as to whether or\nno on that historic night he was drunk; and my position is slightly\nridiculous, for I’ve never cared to tell them what it really was I was\ntaken up with.  What I got out of it is the only morsel of the total\nexperience that is quite my own.  The others were shared, but this is\nincommunicable.  I feel that now, I’m bound to say, even in thus roughly\nevoking the occasion, and it takes something from my pride of clearness.\nHowever, I shall perhaps be as clear as is absolutely needful if I remark\nthat our young lady was too much given up to her own intensity of\nobservation to be sensible of mine.  It was plainly not the question of\nher marriage that had brought her back.  I greatly enjoyed this discovery\nand was sure that had that question alone been involved she would have\nstirred no step.  In this case doubtless Gravener would, in spite of the\nHouse of Commons, have found means to rejoin her.  It afterwards made me\nuncomfortable for her that, alone in the lodging Mrs. Mulville had put\nbefore me as dreary, she should have in any degree the air of waiting for\nher fate; so that I was presently relieved at hearing of her having gone\nto stay at Coldfield.  If she was in England at all while the engagement\nstood the only proper place for her was under Lady Maddock’s wing.  Now\nthat she was unfortunate and relatively poor, perhaps her prospective\nsister-in-law would be wholly won over.\n\nThere would be much to say, if I had space, about the way her behaviour,\nas I caught gleams of it, ministered to the image that had taken birth in\nmy mind, to my private amusement, while that other night I listened to\nGeorge Gravener in the railway-carriage.  I watched her in the light of\nthis queer possibility—a formidable thing certainly to meet—and I was\naware that it coloured, extravagantly perhaps, my interpretation of her\nvery looks and tones.  At Wimbledon for instance it had appeared to me\nshe was literally afraid of Saltram, in dread of a coercion that she had\nbegun already to feel.  I had come up to town with her the next day and\nhad been convinced that, though deeply interested, she was immensely on\nher guard.  She would show as little as possible before she should be\nready to show everything.  What this final exhibition might be on the\npart of a girl perceptibly so able to think things out I found it great\nsport to forecast.  It would have been exciting to be approached by her,\nappealed to by her for advice; but I prayed to heaven I mightn’t find\nmyself in such a predicament.  If there was really a present rigour in\nthe situation of which Gravener had sketched for me the elements, she\nwould have to get out of her difficulty by herself.  It wasn’t I who had\nlaunched her and it wasn’t I who could help her.  I didn’t fail to ask\nmyself why, since I couldn’t help her, I should think so much about her.\nIt was in part my suspense that was responsible for this; I waited\nimpatiently to see whether she wouldn’t have told Mrs. Mulville a portion\nat least of what I had learned from Gravener.  But I saw Mrs. Mulville\nwas still reduced to wonder what she had come out again for if she hadn’t\ncome as a conciliatory bride.  That she had come in some other character\nwas the only thing that fitted all the appearances.  Having for family\nreasons to spend some time that spring in the west of England, I was in a\nmanner out of earshot of the great oceanic rumble—I mean of the\ncontinuous hum of Saltram’s thought—and my uneasiness tended to keep me\nquiet.  There was something I wanted so little to have to say that my\nprudence surmounted my curiosity.  I only wondered if Ruth Anvoy talked\nover the idea of The Coxon Fund with Lady Maddock, and also somewhat why\nI didn’t hear from Wimbledon.  I had a reproachful note about something\nor other from Mrs. Saltram, but it contained no mention of Lady Coxon’s\nniece, on whom her eyes had been much less fixed since the recent\nuntoward events.\n\n\n\n\nX\n\n\nPOOR Adelaide’s silence was fully explained later—practically explained\nwhen in June, returning to London, I was honoured by this admirable woman\nwith an early visit.  As soon as she arrived I guessed everything, and as\nsoon as she told me that darling Ruth had been in her house nearly a\nmonth I had my question ready.  “What in the name of maidenly modesty is\nshe staying in England for?”\n\n“Because she loves me so!” cried Adelaide gaily.  But she hadn’t come to\nsee me only to tell me Miss Anvoy loved her: that was quite sufficiently\nestablished, and what was much more to the point was that Mr. Gravener\nhad now raised an objection to it.  He had protested at least against her\nbeing at Wimbledon, where in the innocence of his heart he had originally\nbrought her himself; he called on her to put an end to their engagement\nin the only proper, the only happy manner.\n\n“And why in the world doesn’t she do do?” I asked.\n\nAdelaide had a pause.  “She says you know.”\n\nThen on my also hesitating she added: “A condition he makes.”\n\n“The Coxon Fund?” I panted.\n\n“He has mentioned to her his having told you about it.”\n\n“Ah but so little!  Do you mean she has accepted the trust?”\n\n“In the most splendid spirit—as a duty about which there can be no two\nopinions.”  To which my friend added: “Of course she’s thinking of Mr.\nSaltram.”\n\nI gave a quick cry at this, which, in its violence, made my visitor turn\npale.  “How very awful!”\n\n“Awful?”\n\n“Why, to have anything to do with such an idea one’s self.”\n\n“I’m sure _you_ needn’t!” and Mrs. Mulville tossed her head.\n\n“He isn’t good enough!” I went on; to which she opposed a sound almost as\ncontentious as my own had been.  This made me, with genuine immediate\nhorror, exclaim: “You haven’t influenced her, I hope!” and my emphasis\nbrought back the blood with a rush to poor Adelaide’s face.  She declared\nwhile she blushed—for I had frightened her again—that she had never\ninfluenced anybody and that the girl had only seen and heard and judged\nfor herself.  _He_ had influenced her, if I would, as he did every one\nwho had a soul: that word, as we knew, even expressed feebly the power of\nthe things he said to haunt the mind.  How could she, Adelaide, help it\nif Miss Anvoy’s mind was haunted?  I demanded with a groan what right a\npretty girl engaged to a rising M.P. had to _have_ a mind; but the only\nexplanation my bewildered friend could give me was that she was so\nclever.  She regarded Mr. Saltram naturally as a tremendous force for\ngood.  She was intelligent enough to understand him and generous enough\nto admire.\n\n“She’s many things enough, but is she, among them, rich enough?” I\ndemanded.  “Rich enough, I mean, to sacrifice such a lot of good money?”\n\n“That’s for herself to judge.  Besides, it’s not her own money; she\ndoesn’t in the least consider it so.”\n\n“And Gravener does, if not _his_ own; and that’s the whole difficulty?”\n\n“The difficulty that brought her back, yes: she had absolutely to see her\npoor aunt’s solicitor.  It’s clear that by Lady Coxon’s will she may have\nthe money, but it’s still clearer to her conscience that the original\ncondition, definite, intensely implied on her uncle’s part, is attached\nto the use of it.  She can only take one view of it.  It’s for the\nEndowment or it’s for nothing.”\n\n“The Endowment,” I permitted myself to observe, “is a conception\nsuperficially sublime, but fundamentally ridiculous.”\n\n“Are you repeating Mr. Gravener’s words?” Adelaide asked.\n\n“Possibly, though I’ve not seen him for months.  It’s simply the way it\nstrikes me too.  It’s an old wife’s tale.  Gravener made some reference\nto the legal aspect, but such an absurdly loose arrangement has _no_\nlegal aspect.”\n\n“Ruth doesn’t insist on that,” said Mrs. Mulville; “and it’s, for her,\nexactly this technical weakness that constitutes the force of the moral\nobligation.”\n\n“Are you repeating _her_ words?” I enquired.  I forget what else Adelaide\nsaid, but she said she was magnificent.  I thought of George Gravener\nconfronted with such magnificence as that, and I asked what could have\nmade two such persons ever suppose they understood each other.  Mrs.\nMulville assured me the girl loved him as such a woman could love and\nthat she suffered as such a woman could suffer.  Nevertheless she wanted\nto see _me_.  At this I sprang up with a groan.  “Oh I’m so sorry!—when?”\nSmall though her sense of humour, I think Adelaide laughed at my\nsequence.  We discussed the day, the nearest it would be convenient I\nshould come out; but before she went I asked my visitor how long she had\nbeen acquainted with these prodigies.\n\n“For several weeks, but I was pledged to secrecy.”\n\n“And that’s why you didn’t write?”\n\n“I couldn’t very well tell you she was with me without telling you that\nno time had even yet been fixed for her marriage.  And I couldn’t very\nwell tell you as much as that without telling you what I knew of the\nreason of it.  It was not till a day or two ago,” Mrs. Mulville went on,\n“that she asked me to ask you if you wouldn’t come and see her.  Then at\nlast she spoke of your knowing about the idea of the Endowment.”\n\nI turned this over.  “Why on earth does she want to see me?”\n\n“To talk with you, naturally, about Mr. Saltram.”\n\n“As a subject for the prize?”  This was hugely obvious, and I presently\nreturned: “I think I’ll sail to-morrow for Australia.”\n\n“Well then—sail!” said Mrs. Mulville, getting up.\n\nBut I frivolously, continued.  “On Thursday at five, we said?”  The\nappointment was made definite and I enquired how, all this time, the\nunconscious candidate had carried himself.\n\n“In perfection, really, by the happiest of chances: he has positively\nbeen a dear.  And then, as to what we revere him for, in the most\nwonderful form.  His very highest—pure celestial light.  You _won’t_ do\nhim an ill turn?” Adelaide pleaded at the door.\n\n“What danger can equal for him the danger to which he’s exposed from\nhimself?” I asked.  “Look out sharp, if he has lately been too prim.\nHe’ll presently take a day off, treat us to some exhibition that will\nmake an Endowment a scandal.”\n\n“A scandal?” Mrs. Mulville dolorously echoed.\n\n“Is Miss Anvoy prepared for that?”\n\nMy visitor, for a moment, screwed her parasol into my carpet.  “He grows\nbigger every day.”\n\n“So do you!” I laughed as she went off.\n\nThat girl at Wimbledon, on the Thursday afternoon, more than justified my\napprehensions.  I recognised fully now the cause of the agitation she had\nproduced in me from the first—the faint foreknowledge that there was\nsomething very stiff I should have to do for her.  I felt more than ever\ncommitted to my fate as, standing before her in the big drawing-room\nwhere they had tactfully left us to ourselves, I tried with a smile to\nstring together the pearls of lucidity which, from her chair, she\nsuccessively tossed me.  Pale and bright, in her monotonous mourning, she\nwas an image of intelligent purpose, of the passion of duty; but I asked\nmyself whether any girl had ever had so charming an instinct as that\nwhich permitted her to laugh out, as for the joy of her difficulty, into\nthe priggish old room.  This remarkable young woman could be earnest\nwithout being solemn, and at moments when I ought doubtless to have\ncursed her obstinacy I found myself watching the unstudied play of her\neyebrows or the recurrence of a singularly intense whiteness produced by\nthe parting of her lips.  These aberrations, I hasten to add, didn’t\nprevent my learning soon enough why she had wished to see me.  Her reason\nfor this was as distinct as her beauty: it was to make me explain what I\nhad meant, on the occasion of our first meeting, by Mr. Saltram’s want of\ndignity.  It wasn’t that she couldn’t imagine, but she desired it there\nfrom my lips.  What she really desired of course was to know whether\nthere was worse about him than what she had found out for herself.  She\nhadn’t been a month so much in the house with him without discovering\nthat he wasn’t a man of monumental bronze.  He was like a jelly minus its\nmould, he had to be embanked; and that was precisely the source of her\ninterest in him and the ground of her project.  She put her project\nboldly before me: there it stood in its preposterous beauty.  She was as\nwilling to take the humorous view of it as I could be: the only\ndifference was that for her the humorous view of a thing wasn’t\nnecessarily prohibitive, wasn’t paralysing.\n\nMoreover she professed that she couldn’t discuss with me the primary\nquestion—the moral obligation: that was in her own breast.  There were\nthings she couldn’t go into—injunctions, impressions she had received.\nThey were a part of the closest intimacy of her intercourse with her\naunt, they were absolutely clear to her; and on questions of delicacy,\nthe interpretation of a fidelity, of a promise, one had always in the\nlast resort to make up one’s mind for one’s self.  It was the idea of the\napplication to the particular case, such a splendid one at last, that\ntroubled her, and she admitted that it stirred very deep things.  She\ndidn’t pretend that such a responsibility was a simple matter; if it\n_had_ been she wouldn’t have attempted to saddle me with any portion of\nit.  The Mulvilles were sympathy itself, but were they absolutely candid?\nCould they indeed be, in their position—would it even have been to be\ndesired?  Yes, she had sent for me to ask no less than that of me—whether\nthere was anything dreadful kept back.  She made no allusion whatever to\nGeorge Gravener—I thought her silence the only good taste and her gaiety\nperhaps a part of the very anxiety of that discretion, the effect of a\ndetermination that people shouldn’t know from herself that her relations\nwith the man she was to marry were strained.  All the weight, however,\nthat she left me to throw was a sufficient implication of the weight _he_\nhad thrown in vain.  Oh she knew the question of character was immense,\nand that one couldn’t entertain any plan for making merit comfortable\nwithout running the gauntlet of that terrible procession of\ninterrogation-points which, like a young ladies’ school out for a walk,\nhooked their uniform noses at the tail of governess Conduct.  But were we\nabsolutely to hold that there was never, never, never an exception,\nnever, never, never an occasion for liberal acceptance, for clever\ncharity, for suspended pedantry—for letting one side, in short,\noutbalance another?  When Miss Anvoy threw off this appeal I could have\nembraced her for so delightfully emphasising her unlikeness to Mrs.\nSaltram.  “Why not have the courage of one’s forgiveness,” she asked, “as\nwell as the enthusiasm of one’s adhesion?”\n\n“Seeing how wonderfully you’ve threshed the whole thing out,” I evasively\nreplied, “gives me an extraordinary notion of the point your enthusiasm\nhas reached.”\n\nShe considered this remark an instant with her eyes on mine, and I\ndivined that it struck her I might possibly intend it as a reference to\nsome personal subjection to our fat philosopher, to some aberration of\nsensibility, some perversion of taste.  At least I couldn’t interpret\notherwise the sudden flash that came into her face.  Such a\nmanifestation, as the result of any word of mine, embarrassed me; but\nwhile I was thinking how to reassure her the flush passed away in a smile\nof exquisite good nature.  “Oh you see one forgets so wonderfully how one\ndislikes him!” she said; and if her tone simply extinguished his strange\nfigure with the brush of its compassion, it also rings in my ear to-day\nas the purest of all our praises.  But with what quick response of fine\npity such a relegation of the man himself made me privately sigh “Ah poor\nSaltram!”  She instantly, with this, took the measure of all I didn’t\nbelieve, and it enabled her to go on: “What can one do when a person has\ngiven such a lift to one’s interest in life?”\n\n“Yes, what can one do?”  If I struck her as a little vague it was because\nI was thinking of another person.  I indulged in another inarticulate\nmurmur—“Poor George Gravener!”  What had become of the lift _he_ had\ngiven that interest?  Later on I made up my mind that she was sore and\nstricken at the appearance he presented of wanting the miserable money.\nThis was the hidden reason of her alienation.  The probable sincerity, in\nspite of the illiberality, of his scruples about the particular use of it\nunder discussion didn’t efface the ugliness of his demand that they\nshould buy a good house with it.  Then, as for _his_ alienation, he\ndidn’t, pardonably enough, grasp the lift Frank Saltram had given her\ninterest in life.  If a mere spectator could ask that last question, with\nwhat rage in his heart the man himself might!  He wasn’t, like her, I was\nto see, too proud to show me why he was disappointed.\n\n\n\n\nXI\n\n\nI WAS unable this time to stay to dinner: such at any rate was the plea\non which I took leave.  I desired in truth to get away from my young\nlady, for that obviously helped me not to pretend to satisfy her.  How\n_could_ I satisfy her?  I asked myself—how could I tell her how much had\nbeen kept back?  I didn’t even know and I certainly didn’t desire to\nknow.  My own policy had ever been to learn the least about poor\nSaltram’s weaknesses—not to learn the most.  A great deal that I had in\nfact learned had been forced upon me by his wife.  There was something\neven irritating in Miss Anvoy’s crude conscientiousness, and I wondered\nwhy, after all, she couldn’t have let him alone and been content to\nentrust George Gravener with the purchase of the good house.  I was sure\nhe would have driven a bargain, got something excellent and cheap.  I\nlaughed louder even than she, I temporised, I failed her; I told her I\nmust think over her case.  I professed a horror of responsibilities and\ntwitted her with her own extravagant passion for them.  It wasn’t really\nthat I was afraid of the scandal, the moral discredit for the Fund; what\ntroubled me most was a feeling of a different order.  Of course, as the\nbeneficiary of the Fund was to enjoy a simple life-interest, as it was\nhoped that new beneficiaries would arise and come up to new standards, it\nwouldn’t be a trifle that the first of these worthies shouldn’t have been\na striking example of the domestic virtues.  The Fund would start badly,\nas it were, and the laurel would, in some respects at least, scarcely be\ngreener from the brows of the original wearer.  That idea, however, was\nat that hour, as I have hinted, not the source of solicitude it ought\nperhaps to have been, for I felt less the irregularity of Saltram’s\ngetting the money than that of this exalted young woman’s giving it up.\nI wanted her to have it for herself, and I told her so before I went\naway.  She looked graver at this than she had looked at all, saying she\nhoped such a preference wouldn’t make me dishonest.\n\nIt made me, to begin with, very restless—made me, instead of going\nstraight to the station, fidget a little about that many-coloured Common\nwhich gives Wimbledon horizons.  There was a worry for me to work off, or\nrather keep at a distance, for I declined even to admit to myself that I\nhad, in Miss Anvoy’s phrase, been saddled with it.  What could have been\nclearer indeed than the attitude of recognising perfectly what a world of\ntrouble The Coxon Fund would in future save us, and of yet liking better\nto face a continuance of that trouble than see, and in fact contribute\nto, a deviation from attainable bliss in the life of two other persons in\nwhom I was deeply interested?  Suddenly, at the end of twenty minutes,\nthere was projected across this clearness the image of a massive\nmiddle-aged man seated on a bench under a tree, with sad far-wandering\neyes and plump white hands folded on the head of a stick—a stick I\nrecognised, a stout gold-headed staff that I had given him in devoted\ndays.  I stopped short as he turned his face to me, and it happened that\nfor some reason or other I took in as I had perhaps never done before the\nbeauty of his rich blank gaze.  It was charged with experience as the sky\nis charged with light, and I felt on the instant as if we had been\noverspanned and conjoined by the great arch of a bridge or the great dome\nof a temple.  Doubtless I was rendered peculiarly sensitive to it by\nsomething in the way I had been giving him up and sinking him.  While I\nmet it I stood there smitten, and I felt myself responding to it with a\nsort of guilty grimace.  This brought back his attention in a smile which\nexpressed for me a cheerful weary patience, a bruised noble gentleness.\nI had told Miss Anvoy that he had no dignity, but what did he seem to me,\nall unbuttoned and fatigued as he waited for me to come up, if he didn’t\nseem unconcerned with small things, didn’t seem in short majestic?  There\nwas majesty in his mere unconsciousness of our little conferences and\npuzzlements over his maintenance and his reward.\n\nAfter I had sat by him a few minutes I passed my arm over his big soft\nshoulder—wherever you touched him you found equally little firmness—and\nsaid in a tone of which the suppliance fell oddly on my own ear: “Come\nback to town with me, old friend—come back and spend the evening.”  I\nwanted to hold him, I wanted to keep him, and at Waterloo, an hour later,\nI telegraphed possessively to the Mulvilles.  When he objected, as\nregards staying all night, that he had no things, I asked him if he\nhadn’t everything of mine.  I had abstained from ordering dinner, and it\nwas too late for preliminaries at a club; so we were reduced to tea and\nfried fish at my rooms—reduced also to the transcendent.  Something had\ncome up which made me want him to feel at peace with me—and which,\nprecisely, was all the dear man himself wanted on any occasion.  I had\ntoo often had to press upon him considerations irrelevant, but it gives\nme pleasure now to think that on that particular evening I didn’t even\nmention Mrs. Saltram and the children.  Late into the night we smoked and\ntalked; old shames and old rigours fell away from us; I only let him see\nthat I was conscious of what I owed him.  He was as mild as contrition\nand as copious as faith; he was never so fine as on a shy return, and\neven better at forgiving than at being forgiven.  I dare say it was a\nsmaller matter than that famous night at Wimbledon, the night of the\nproblematical sobriety and of Miss Anvoy’s initiation; but I was as much\nin it on this occasion as I had been out of it then.  At about 1.30 he\nwas sublime.\n\nHe never, in whatever situation, rose till all other risings were over,\nand his breakfasts, at Wimbledon, had always been the principal reason\nmentioned by departing cooks.  The coast was therefore clear for me to\nreceive her when, early the next morning, to my surprise, it was\nannounced to me his wife had called.  I hesitated, after she had come up,\nabout telling her Saltram was in the house, but she herself settled the\nquestion, kept me reticent by drawing forth a sealed letter which,\nlooking at me very hard in the eyes, she placed, with a pregnant absence\nof comment, in my hand.  For a single moment there glimmered before me\nthe fond hope that Mrs. Saltram had tendered me, as it were, her\nresignation and desired to embody the act in an unsparing form.  To bring\nthis about I would have feigned any humiliation; but after my eyes had\ncaught the superscription I heard myself say with a flatness that\nbetrayed a sense of something very different from relief: “Oh the\nPudneys!”  I knew their envelopes though they didn’t know mine.  They\nalways used the kind sold at post-offices with the stamp affixed, and as\nthis letter hadn’t been posted they had wasted a penny on me.  I had seen\ntheir horrid missives to the Mulvilles, but hadn’t been in direct\ncorrespondence with them.\n\n“They enclosed it to me, to be delivered.  They doubtless explain to you\nthat they hadn’t your address.”\n\nI turned the thing over without opening it.  “Why in the world should\nthey write to me?”\n\n“Because they’ve something to tell you.  The worst,” Mrs. Saltram dryly\nadded.\n\nIt was another chapter, I felt, of the history of their lamentable\nquarrel with her husband, the episode in which, vindictively,\ndisingenuously as they themselves had behaved, one had to admit that he\nhad put himself more grossly in the wrong than at any moment of his life.\nHe had begun by insulting the matchless Mulvilles for these more specious\nprotectors, and then, according to his wont at the end of a few months,\nhad dug a still deeper ditch for his aberration than the chasm left\nyawning behind.  The chasm at Wimbledon was now blessedly closed; but the\nPudneys, across their persistent gulf, kept up the nastiest fire.  I\nnever doubted they had a strong case, and I had been from the first for\nnot defending him—reasoning that if they weren’t contradicted they’d\nperhaps subside.  This was above all what I wanted, and I so far\nprevailed that I did arrest the correspondence in time to save our little\ncircle an infliction heavier than it perhaps would have borne.  I knew,\nthat is I divined, that their allegations had gone as yet only as far as\ntheir courage, conscious as they were in their own virtue of an exposed\nplace in which Saltram could have planted a blow.  It was a question with\nthem whether a man who had himself so much to cover up would dare his\nblow; so that these vessels of rancour were in a manner afraid of each\nother.  I judged that on the day the Pudneys should cease for some reason\nor other to be afraid they would treat us to some revelation more\ndisconcerting than any of its predecessors.  As I held Mrs. Saltram’s\nletter in my hand it was distinctly communicated to me that the day had\ncome—they had ceased to be afraid.  “I don’t want to know the worst,” I\npresently declared.\n\n“You’ll have to open the letter.  It also contains an enclosure.”\n\nI felt it—it was fat and uncanny.  “Wheels within wheels!” I exclaimed.\n“There’s something for me too to deliver.”\n\n“So they tell me—to Miss Anvoy.”\n\nI stared; I felt a certain thrill.  “Why don’t they send it to her\ndirectly?”\n\nMrs. Saltram hung fire.  “Because she’s staying with Mr. and Mrs.\nMulville.”\n\n“And why should that prevent?”\n\nAgain my visitor faltered, and I began to reflect on the grotesque, the\nunconscious perversity of her action.  I was the only person save George\nGravener and the Mulvilles who was aware of Sir Gregory Coxon’s and of\nMiss Anvoy’s strange bounty.  Where could there have been a more signal\nillustration of the clumsiness of human affairs than her having\ncomplacently selected this moment to fly in the face of it?  “There’s the\nchance of their seeing her letters.  They know Mr. Pudney’s hand.”\n\nStill I didn’t understand; then it flashed upon me.  “You mean they might\nintercept it?  How can you imply anything so base?” I indignantly\ndemanded.\n\n“It’s not I—it’s Mr. Pudney!” cried Mrs. Saltram with a flush.  “It’s his\nown idea.”\n\n“Then why couldn’t he send the letter to you to be delivered?”\n\nMrs. Saltram’s embarrassment increased; she gave me another hard look.\n“You must make that out for yourself.”\n\nI made it out quickly enough.  “It’s a denunciation?”\n\n“A real lady doesn’t betray her husband!” this virtuous woman exclaimed.\n\nI burst out laughing, and I fear my laugh may have had an effect of\nimpertinence.  “Especially to Miss Anvoy, who’s so easily shocked? Why do\nsuch things concern _her_?” I asked, much at a loss.\n\n“Because she’s there, exposed to all his craft.  Mr. and Mrs. Pudney have\nbeen watching this: they feel she may be taken in.”\n\n“Thank you for all the rest of us!  What difference can it make when she\nhas lost her power to contribute?”\n\nAgain Mrs. Saltram considered; then very nobly: “There are other things\nin the world than money.”  This hadn’t occurred to her so long as the\nyoung lady had any; but she now added, with a glance at my letter, that\nMr. and Mrs. Pudney doubtless explained their motives.  “It’s all in\nkindness,” she continued as she got up.\n\n“Kindness to Miss Anvoy?  You took, on the whole, another view of\nkindness before her reverses.”\n\nMy companion smiled with some acidity “Perhaps you’re no safer than the\nMulvilles!”\n\nI didn’t want her to think that, nor that she should report to the\nPudneys that they had not been happy in their agent; and I well remember\nthat this was the moment at which I began, with considerable emotion, to\npromise myself to enjoin upon Miss Anvoy never to open any letter that\nshould come to her in one of those penny envelopes.  My emotion, and I\nfear I must add my confusion, quickly deepened; I presently should have\nbeen as glad to frighten Mrs. Saltram as to think I might by some\ndiplomacy restore the Pudneys to a quieter vigilance.\n\n“It’s best you should take _my_ view of my safety,” I at any rate soon\nresponded.  When I saw she didn’t know what I meant by this I added: “You\nmay turn out to have done, in bringing me this letter, a thing you’ll\nprofoundly regret.”  My tone had a significance which, I could see, did\nmake her uneasy, and there was a moment, after I had made two or three\nmore remarks of studiously bewildering effect, at which her eyes followed\nso hungrily the little flourish of the letter with which I emphasised\nthem that I instinctively slipped Mr. Pudney’s communication into my\npocket.  She looked, in her embarrassed annoyance, capable of grabbing it\nto send it back to him.  I felt, after she had gone, as if I had almost\ngiven her my word I wouldn’t deliver the enclosure.  The passionate\nmovement, at any rate, with which, in solitude, I transferred the whole\nthing, unopened, from my pocket to a drawer which I double-locked would\nhave amounted, for an initiated observer, to some such pledge.\n\n\n\n\nXII\n\n\nMRS. SALTRAM left me drawing my breath more quickly and indeed almost in\npain—as if I had just perilously grazed the loss of something precious.\nI didn’t quite know what it was—it had a shocking resemblance to my\nhonour.  The emotion was the livelier surely in that my pulses even yet\nvibrated to the pleasure with which, the night before, I had rallied to\nthe rare analyst, the great intellectual adventurer and pathfinder.  What\nhad dropped from me like a cumbersome garment as Saltram appeared before\nme in the afternoon on the heath was the disposition to haggle over his\nvalue.  Hang it, one had to choose, one had to put that value somewhere;\nso I would put it really high and have done with it.  Mrs. Mulville drove\nin for him at a discreet hour—the earliest she could suppose him to have\ngot up; and I learned that Miss Anvoy would also have come had she not\nbeen expecting a visit from Mr. Gravener.  I was perfectly mindful that I\nwas under bonds to see this young lady, and also that I had a letter to\nhand to her; but I took my time, I waited from day to day.  I left Mrs.\nSaltram to deal as her apprehensions should prompt with the Pudneys.  I\nknew at last what I meant—I had ceased to wince at my responsibility.  I\ngave this supreme impression of Saltram time to fade if it would; but it\ndidn’t fade, and, individually, it hasn’t faded even now.  During the\nmonth that I thus invited myself to stiffen again, Adelaide Mulville,\nperplexed by my absence, wrote to me to ask why I _was_ so stiff.  At\nthat season of the year I was usually oftener “with” them.  She also\nwrote that she feared a real estrangement had set in between Mr. Gravener\nand her sweet young friend—a state of things but half satisfactory to her\nso long as the advantage resulting to Mr. Saltram failed to disengage\nitself from the merely nebulous state.  She intimated that her sweet\nyoung friend was, if anything, a trifle too reserved; she also intimated\nthat there might now be an opening for another clever young man.  There\nnever was the slightest opening, I may here parenthesise, and of course\nthe question can’t come up to-day.  These are old frustrations now.  Ruth\nAnvoy hasn’t married, I hear, and neither have I.  During the month,\ntoward the end, I wrote to George Gravener to ask if, on a special\nerrand, I might come to see him, and his answer was to knock the very\nnext day at my door.  I saw he had immediately connected my enquiry with\nthe talk we had had in the railway-carriage, and his promptitude showed\nthat the ashes of his eagerness weren’t yet cold.  I told him there was\nsomething I felt I ought in candour to let him know—I recognised the\nobligation his friendly confidence had laid on me.\n\n“You mean Miss Anvoy has talked to you?  She has told me so herself,” he\nsaid.\n\n“It wasn’t to tell you so that I wanted to see you,” I replied; “for it\nseemed to me that such a communication would rest wholly with herself.\nIf however she did speak to you of our conversation she probably told you\nI was discouraging.”\n\n“Discouraging?”\n\n“On the subject of a present application of The Coxon Fund.”\n\n“To the case of Mr. Saltram?  My dear fellow, I don’t know what you call\ndiscouraging!” Gravener cried.\n\n“Well I thought I was, and I thought she thought I was.”\n\n“I believe she did, but such a thing’s measured by the effect.  She’s not\n‘discouraged,’” he said.\n\n“That’s her own affair.  The reason I asked you to see me was that it\nappeared to me I ought to tell you frankly that—decidedly!—I can’t\nundertake to produce that effect.  In fact I don’t want to!”\n\n“It’s very good of you, damn you!” my visitor laughed, red and really\ngrave.  Then he said: “You’d like to see that scoundrel publicly\nglorified—perched on the pedestal of a great complimentary pension?”\n\nI braced myself.  “Taking one form of public recognition with another it\nseems to me on the whole I should be able to bear it.  When I see the\ncompliments that _are_ paid right and left I ask myself why this one\nshouldn’t take its course.  This therefore is what you’re entitled to\nhave looked to me to mention to you.  I’ve some evidence that perhaps\nwould be really dissuasive, but I propose to invite Mss Anvoy to remain\nin ignorance of it.”\n\n“And to invite me to do the same?”\n\n“Oh you don’t require it—you’ve evidence enough.  I speak of a sealed\nletter that I’ve been requested to deliver to her.”\n\n“And you don’t mean to?”\n\n“There’s only one consideration that would make me,” I said.\n\nGravener’s clear handsome eyes plunged into mine a minute, but evidently\nwithout fishing up a clue to this motive—a failure by which I was almost\nwounded.  “What does the letter contain?”\n\n“It’s sealed, as I tell you, and I don’t know what it contains.”\n\n“Why is it sent through you?”\n\n“Rather than you?” I wondered how to put the thing.  “The only\nexplanation I can think of is that the person sending it may have\nimagined your relations with Miss Anvoy to be at an end—may have been\ntold this is the case by Mrs. Saltram.”\n\n“My relations with Miss Anvoy are not at an end,” poor Gravener\nstammered.\n\nAgain for an instant I thought.  “The offer I propose to make you gives\nme the right to address you a question remarkably direct.  Are you still\nengaged to Miss Anvoy?”\n\n“No, I’m not,” he slowly brought out.  “But we’re perfectly good\nfriends.”\n\n“Such good friends that you’ll again become prospective husband and wife\nif the obstacle in your path be removed?”\n\n“Removed?” he anxiously repeated.\n\n“If I send Miss Anvoy the letter I speak of she may give up her idea.”\n\n“Then for God’s sake send it!”\n\n“I’ll do so if you’re ready to assure me that her sacrifice would now\npresumably bring about your marriage.”\n\n“I’d marry her the next day!” my visitor cried.\n\n“Yes, but would she marry _you_?  What I ask of you of course is nothing\nless than your word of honour as to your conviction of this.  If you give\nit me,” I said, “I’ll engage to hand her the letter before night.”\n\nGravener took up his hat; turning it mechanically round he stood looking\na moment hard at its unruffled perfection.  Then very angrily honestly\nand gallantly, “Hand it to the devil!” he broke out; with which he\nclapped the hat on his head and left me.\n\n“Will you read it or not?” I said to Ruth Anvoy, at Wimbledon, when I had\ntold her the story of Mrs. Saltram’s visit.\n\nShe debated for a time probably of the briefest, but long enough to make\nme nervous.  “Have you brought it with you?”\n\n“No indeed.  It’s at home, locked up.”\n\nThere was another great silence, and then she said “Go back and destroy\nit.”\n\nI went back, but I didn’t destroy it till after Saltram’s death, when I\nburnt it unread.  The Pudneys approached her again pressingly, but,\nprompt as they were, The Coxon Fund had already become an operative\nbenefit and a general amaze: Mr. Saltram, while we gathered about, as it\nwere, to watch the manna descend, had begun to draw the magnificent\nincome.  He drew it as he had always drawn everything, with a grand\nabstracted gesture.  Its magnificence, alas, as all the world now knows,\nquite quenched him; it was the beginning of his decline.  It was also\nnaturally a new grievance for his wife, who began to believe in him as\nsoon as he was blighted, and who at this hour accuses us of having bribed\nhim, on the whim of a meddlesome American, to renounce his glorious\noffice, to become, as she says, like everybody else.  The very day he\nfound himself able to publish he wholly ceased to produce.  This deprived\nus, as may easily be imagined, of much of our occupation, and especially\ndeprived the Mulvilles, whose want of self-support I never measured till\nthey lost their great inmate.  They’ve no one to live on now.  Adelaide’s\nmost frequent reference to their destitution is embodied in the remark\nthat dear far-away Ruth’s intentions were doubtless good.  She and Kent\nare even yet looking for another prop, but no one presents a true sphere\nof usefulness.  They complain that people are self-sufficing.  With\nSaltram the fine type of the child of adoption was scattered, the\ngrander, the elder style.  They’ve got their carriage back, but what’s an\nempty carriage?  In short I think we were all happier as well as poorer\nbefore; even including George Gravener, who by the deaths of his brother\nand his nephew has lately become Lord Maddock.  His wife, whose fortune\nclears the property, is criminally dull; he hates being in the Upper\nHouse, and hasn’t yet had high office.  But what are these accidents,\nwhich I should perhaps apologise for mentioning, in the light of the\ngreat eventual boon promised the patient by the rate at which The Coxon\nFund must be rolling up?\n\nNow, answer the question based on the story asconcisely as you can, using a single phrase if possible. Do not provide any explanation.\n\nQuestion: What relation to Ruth Anvoy is Lady Coxon?\n\nAnswer:", "answer": "Lady Coxon is Ruth's aunt."}